Sunday, November 20, 2016
Online media almost happened 2
Earlier I noted the failed experiment of remotely printed newspapers via fax.
I speculated:
Remote control of business machines. A girl might be punching cards remotely, and at the same time a tabloid newspaper would be printed.
Obviously nothing came of this, but why?
At three 8x11 pages per hour this was guaranteed to fail. A real 1938 newspaper was a two-dimensional experience, with lots of different eye-attracting material on each BIG page. News, humor, poetry, cartoons, photos, ads. No time for any of the good stuff on this system. If the system had concentrated solely on text, it could have used Baudot teletype instead of facsimile. Teletypes could rattle out a page per minute, using the same SW bands with less modulated bandwidth. That would have made it worth the trouble for a serious text-consumer. With a little more inventiveness (eg using something like a Vari-Typer for output), the teletype could have turned out a big two-dimensional page with headlines and columns and 'ASCII pictures', coming close to the real newspaper experience.Turns out IBM was thinking exactly the same thing in 1945. They were calling the idea Radio-Type........
Remote control of business machines. A girl might be punching cards remotely, and at the same time a tabloid newspaper would be printed.
Obviously nothing came of this, but why?
Labels: Alternate universe, Asked and sort of answered
¶ 11:10 AM
