ASR33
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Introduced about 1963, Teletype Corporation's ASR33 was a very popular model of teleprinter. It had a built in paper tape reader and tape punch (8 hole ASCII). It could print and read or punch tape at the speed of 10 characters per second. The ASR33 tape reader was purely mechanical; 8 spring loaded fingers would be thrust into the tape (one character at a time) and an assortment of rods and levers would sense how high the finger rose, which told it if there was a hole in the tape at that position.
The ASR32 was a similar device, but used five hole Baudot code. The KSR33 and KSR32 models lacked the paper tape reader and punch.
More expensive Teletype systems used photo readers that used light sensors to detect the presence or absence of punched holes in the tape. These could work at much higher speeds (hundreds of characters per second). More sophisticated punches were also available that could run at somewhat higher speeds; Teletype's BRPE punch could run at 60 characters per second.
External link
- Photo of an ASR33 (http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/teletype.jpg)
