I love it when you casually whip out the Texas Instruments to do a little arithmetic. I had one of those TI calculators in the late '70s. Upgraded to an HP 10C programmable calculator in 1982, for university.
Because they are bulky, inefficient, expensive, require maintenance and need to be made specifically for a purpose. - I love this displays, i would use them in everything, but i also think that modern displays are amazing (Might not be as visually interesting as the old ones, but doesn't remove the fact that the engineering behind them is just breathtaking) xD
@@Mofapilot Agree. Have you seen Technology Connection's video on E-Ink displays: ua-cam.com/video/dhRgw0HfrYU/v-deo.html&ab_channel=TechnologyConnections
@@rhodexa I understand that and I agree, but older technologies are much nicer to explore and to look at. You can clearly see what is happening and how everything works. That is what makes me happy when someone makes a video about them. :)
@@maxmuster3297 Yeah, i feel the same. Even old 8-bit computers are a beauty; you may not be able to see what's happening but is so much easier to comprehend, and thus, imagine and admire what it is doing.
My father worked for Teleregister in the 1950's through 1970's. He was a repairman for the "Big Board" at the NYSE and used to bring broken parts home for me and my brother to play with. We made up all kinds of stuff with these devices. So fun to see this video! Thanks.
Yes. Fans of the TV series Mission: Impossible (1966 to 1973) have seen these digital displays - and other similar ones in many scenes. Thanks for sharing the info on these neat early digital displays.
Teleregisters are prominently featured as part of the bomber fail-safe device in Mission: Impossible - "Recovery" (Season 2, Episode 25 - 1968) and also as the safe's time-lock from "A Game of Chess" (Season 2, Episode 17 - 1968)
These displays are very similar in operation to score reels on early electromechanical pinball machines from around the same era. I'd suggest checking out Joes Classic Video Games channel... they have several (dozen) repair videos on electromechanical pinball machines (and later stuff too) where he goes into detail of their operation including displays, bonus counters and other cool stuff. EM pinball machines have an artistry to them that modern electronics just aren't capable of
I was about to say the same thing. For reference, here's a recent video repairing (among other things) one of those displays. ua-cam.com/video/nBLQA_TNwvI/v-deo.html
@@Shamino0 Lol... knew it was going to be a Joe's video before even clicking the link. It really is insanely interesting how they accomplished these things with the technology of the time.
That new intro never gets old-it’s absolutely perfect. A wall full of these teleregister displays must’ve been quite loud with all the mechanical clattering. We snicker at pulse phone systems now, but it allows the elegant simplicity of being able to accomplish so much with only 2 or 3 contacts. It would be interesting to see the controller that produced the pulses to operate these displays, but I’m sure it was enormous and is long gone. The vertical axis of the barrel forces the display space to be really narrow compared to the overall width of the unit. Kind of interesting to compare to horizontal axis barrels like odometers. It also makes me appreciate why Heathrow’s iconic flip displays are made the way they are-the two pieces allow a greater area of each unit to be used for characters.
Hi Fran Bill B here and I worked for Teleregister starting in 1959 to 1988. The indicator that you have there was part of the Stock Boards that Teleregister provided stock quotation from 1930 till 1968. Your explanation of how it operated is basically correct. Everytime a price was updated the indicators in that field would first be cleared to blank and then pulsed to the desired number. Clearing the indicators to blank provided a way of knowing where the indicator was. One area that you were amiss is the operating voltage. It was 48 to 54 volts. The pulse rate was about 20PPS and the duty cycle was 50% The clearing pulses always numbered 10 and it insured the indicator would be at the blank location. Then the lower contact would be grounded and anywhere from 0 to 10 pulses would spin the indicator to the desired number.
The two oval openings on the top are the sockets where the 'lock' popped in when you slid it into the rack. You needed to release the lock manually (which required a special tool) in order to extract it from the rack.
Hi Fran. Greatly enjoy your channel, particularly those featuring vintage display tech. In UK some rail control centres of the late 1950s to early 70s used very similar rotary displays made by Sodeco to store and display four-character train IDs. These tracked around schematic representations of the network by applying a train of ten pulses for each character when a train passed a trackside signal out in the field. The pulses would first rotate the source display round to a home position then be switched to the destination display for the remainder to count up to the previously stored value. All based on telephone exchange type equipment, off-stage storage of an ID used rotary selectors and the operators entered IDs using old-fashioned rotary telephone dials. A very simple system conceptually, but the displays were maintenance-intensive and were all changed out for various alternative displays over the years before the old control panels were themselves superseded fully by computer screen-based technology. When I was a trainee back in the early 80s, there were still a few of these displays around but they were gone very soon after that. Swindon Panel Society have such an old control panel at the Didcot Railway Centre museum with an operations simulator under the hood. For the train number display, the panel is currently still equipped with the display screens that were there at decommissioning in 2015, but there's a project to restore these mechanical oddities on part of it, along with some of the other displays used over its history. Here's a video of one of the displays in action. ua-cam.com/video/TsF_Tqr_kr4/v-deo.html
More cool display stuff! The first thing this reminded me of was a synchronous clock system. (Master clocks like schools and airports.) The Simplex system used a setup kinda like that so at the 59th minute, it would open the input lead and no advance until a pulse went thru the other contact, setting it to 00 and reconnecting the input again. So a few extra pulses would insure all clocks started correctly. And, as others noted, very like a pinball score reel. For resetting the reels to 00000 at the start the reset relay would route a bunch of fast pulses from the score motor thru a contact on the reel that would drop out at 0. Love that "chunk, chunk, chunk" sound as several reels reset. (My pin has four banks of 4 reels each, so can be a bit noisy!) Love EM pins. A lot more work to maintain than electronic pins, but often more responsive and tune-able. And very satisfying to get back to full speed and function! Mechanical logic is fun... Stu
All of your videos need to be saved and stored, they are pure gold. Please keep making them I learn more from some of your casual comments than I have from hours of study. You are an incredible teacher.
I love these electromechanical devices and they throw me back to a time in history to when things like this were magical. I can only imagine the sound of a wall of these things doing a zero reset.
Very interesting. Coming from a digital hardware design background, it is refreshing and I enjoy the vintage “analogish”’ equipment experimental videos. Nice job. Thanks.
I am old enough to have been alive in 1959 when these were built. If you could use your amazing talents to make an electronic machine to transport me back to that era I would be very grateful Fran. Getting bit fed up with so called life today !
My uncle was the lead engineer at a small town switching station back in the day of the 10x10 selector relays. He took me in to check it out once. It was very loud. I imagine this would be similar though probably not nearly as many kerchunks per second as a room with thousands of line selectors in it.
The patent drawings show some really cool designs. US2737650A Including the copper dial plates. EDIT found the rack in which these slide, it's at edit 6. EDIT 9 Found the actual patent drawing for the unit in the video US1979028A. The ratchet mechanism dates back to 1932!!! Whoa. This baby is even older than the 50's. Edit 2: US2617870A is also interesting. Edit 3: whoa, check this one out. US3245074A yeah, i fell down the hole. Edit 4: another variant US2737650A Edit 5: On the original patent, one of his partners (if that's what you call them) had this one US1890878A Edit 6: JACKPOT found the rack in which the dial is set, check this baby out. US2117661A
12:40 a vintage TI-30 calculator! I have one of those. It was a gift from one of my aunts when I was a teen back in the '80s. The manual was bigger than the calculator! I have since moved to Texas and live within half-an-hour of Texas Instruments
Thanks, Fran. Beautifully analyzed and explained, as always. Imagine the sound of hundreds of these being updated with stock prices. Four would make a rather nifty clickety-clackety clock, driven via a microprocessor, of course. Why not mix the old and the new? Looking forward to whatever you dig up next!
Fran, I worked as an engineer for the Teleregister Corporation AKA Bunker Ramo Corp in Stamford CT. In the nid 60s. Be happy to answer any questions you may have. Also, I like to comment that the numerical indicator you have was also used by the New Haven railroad, banking industry and a small installation in Denver Colorado for the United Airlines system.
Massimo, Fran et. al - I am old enough to remember when these were the displays used in Chicago at O'Hare Airport and the two downtown Chicago train stations in the early 1960's. Periodically they'd cycle the entire wall-sized display to "blank" and regenerate it with new flight / train numbers, gates / tracks, and arrival / departure times. I distinctly remember the clack-clack (pause) clack-clack of the double-pulse advancement. But my distinct recollection is that the displays would all sequence to "clear" simultaneously, but then all the lines would re-build from left to right (or right-to-left, maybe), because we'd have to pause to wait for the new information to appear. Thanks for digging this weird stuff up, Fran!
I still use mine from Junior High circa 1977 and it didn't have the inverse tangent error of the first versions. Just have to remember to remove the battery when I'm not using it for long periods. The battery goes dead since the OFF switch is a soft-Off function.
Love the typeface used in the display. Spent a few minute looking for it, but didn't find anything right off the bat. Love the path these display videos have take you! Thanks Fran. :)
I did find this though. (a lot to dig through) www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-C13-f74621aa0e59172343ec89356c7e6ee8/pdf/GOVPUB-C13-f74621aa0e59172343ec89356c7e6ee8.pdf
I'm in the UK and I bought something very similar to this in about 1970, I used it as a call counter on a telephone answering machine I designed. One difference was that mine was fully enclosed, I don't recall if it had a blank position.
Those numbers are in a beautiful font. Awesome display!! They look luminescent though, thinking about the video you made last time about not so healthy clockfaces and -hands. But i wouldn't let that stand in the way..
12:49 She's using a Texas instruments TI-30 calculator. I had that same exact calculator in High School 1976-77. Now that is old school....and way cool. Rock on Fran!
This is just the sort of thing my dad would see and try to build himself. Back in the sixties, he'd have coil forms, masonite, brass screws and spools of enameled magnet wire to make his own latching relays. It was fun to him.
Back when the Pennsylvania Railroad ran Suburban Station in Philly, the status of arriving and departing trains was shown on a lovely board near the ticket booths with times shown with mechanical digits like these. I think the ticketing system was Teleregister as well. "As high*speed digital computers, magnetic storage units and other electronic components were perfected, the company advanced rapidly in the field of special purpose electronic engineering. TELEREGISTER was the first (working with engineers of a leading airline) to design and install a successful magnetic drum system for commercial use. This pioneer system, TELEREGBTER'S Magnetronic Reservisor, has since been adapted as the first electronic reservations control system for use on America's railroads." s3data.computerhistory.org/brochures/teleregister.specialpurposesystems.1956.102646324.pdf
Hey Fran... 🌺 Wonder?... Was there a control board to operate these displays?... If so,... I wonder what it looked like, and how it was operated? Very Cool Vlog Fran! 😎👍 THANX FOR SHARING! 🤗 Blessings: James...
About the same vintage, in telephone exchanges there were devices known as "uniselectors" that work in much the same way, except that instead of having a display, they moved wiper contacts to select output contacts. There may be one set of contacts in to 20 or so sets of contacts out. The reason I mention it is that they were wired so that when a call cleared, they would reset to the start position (equivalent to the b lank on those displays), which was all done by contacts on the uniselector. I'm wondering if there is a use of those two contacts relative to earth that does the same thing. When you showed it working, the pulse on the upper contact advanced the display, I'm wondering if connecting power from the case to the lower contact causes it to do an auto-reset? It may not, it's just a hunch.
You're going to hate me for this, my teletype workshop in a telephone building was in the room where these "counters" were installed in a huge array. The clickety clack didn't bother me much, they were pretty quiet compared to a Model 35 Teletype banging away. The counters slid in from the front and made contact with contacts at the back. There were single digit counters by row and column and then multi-digit ones in the rows and columns. When they switched over to fully computerized counting systems, they turned them all off and I was amazed at how quiet it got in there. I was there when they tore out all the old equipment, just throwing all of the counters into big plastic rolling carts which they took out and dumped to be taken to a bulk recycler. I "salvaged" a few of the single and multi digit counters to use with my model railroad, but that project also got scrapped in favor of computerization. Eventually I just tossed them myself. Although telco standard battery was 48 to 52 volts, the phone companies did use other voltages in and around the offices, and 12V is easily derived from 48V. Along side various switches and frames, you would find little bakelite blocks with several different voltages present in order to facilitate testing.
I’m diggin’ the 40+ year old TI-30 calculator. I had one just like it in high school in my physics class in ‘76-‘77. I think it cost about $30 which was a good some of money back then. Brings back some great memories.
As others have pointed out, this works the same way EM pinball displays work. I suspect the upper leaf switch was the reset circuit that was senta series of 10 pulses that guaranteed the home blank position. Afterwards, numeric data was pulsed in through the lower leaf terminal. The case would have been the common ground. I also wonder if the working voltage was 6.3 volts, which was at that time very common as it was the same used for supplying tube filaments, and tube gear was still the prevalent technology of the time. In fact, the solenoid may well be designed for ac power, which had an added benefit of not causing the large emi kickback when the magnetic field collapsed - EM pinballs used AC solenoids for that same reason. Still very interesting - I have not seen that specific display before. Love it!
When I was a kid my grandad had mini traveling displays (like the zipper on Times Square). Had a paper band. Punched it out to read like letters. Ran on a clock type motor. Wish I still had it. Skys the limit for electromechanical displays. I used to work on central clock systems. They got extremely elaborate.
That is a nice device that, as a fun project, can be reproduced with 3d printing, small solenoid and a few wires. I did a note, to return to this, when I will have free time
This is very similar to an electromagnetic pinball score reel. You might enjoy having a look at one of those sometime! Or better yet a whole EM pinball.
I recall seeing a smaller Alpha-Numeric display on a B-52 bomber in an old Cold War film. It was used for receiving coded messages from command. I remember it making that click clack noise as the letters and numbers registered on it.
hahaha i just posted the same thing. I also worked in a really old building, and the elevator used the same kind of switches to stop and start the elevator.
I can almost hear what the stock exchange boards would have sounded like every time they update. Almost like a telephony stepper switch. Something cool about mechanical stuff like this.
I love it when you casually whip out the Texas Instruments to do a little arithmetic. I had one of those TI calculators in the late '70s. Upgraded to an HP 10C programmable calculator in 1982, for university.
I love '50s tech names; "Reservisor", "device-o-tron", "thing-o-matic"
Turbo Enacabulator
"Magnetronic Reservisor" really is the most 1950s product name ever
@@fluxoff Not to be confused with toytales.ca/think-tron-hasbro-1960/
Or the 1500 Megawatt Aperture Science Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button or the Aperture Science Portable Quantum Tunneling Device 😂
Haha! I have a typewriter called a Carona-matic 8000 from the 1970s.
Omg memories of my childhood - that TI-30!
This was a really nice explanation. Clear camera work and demo, and interesting history. Enjoyed a lot.
Fran wrote below the video: "Why can't displays be this cool today?" - And I totally agree.
I think, that e-ink displays are the coolest, we currently have. Especially the ones with color
Because they are bulky, inefficient, expensive, require maintenance and need to be made specifically for a purpose. - I love this displays, i would use them in everything, but i also think that modern displays are amazing (Might not be as visually interesting as the old ones, but doesn't remove the fact that the engineering behind them is just breathtaking) xD
@@Mofapilot Agree. Have you seen Technology Connection's video on E-Ink displays: ua-cam.com/video/dhRgw0HfrYU/v-deo.html&ab_channel=TechnologyConnections
@@rhodexa I understand that and I agree, but older technologies are much nicer to explore and to look at. You can clearly see what is happening and how everything works. That is what makes me happy when someone makes a video about them. :)
@@maxmuster3297 Yeah, i feel the same. Even old 8-bit computers are a beauty; you may not be able to see what's happening but is so much easier to comprehend, and thus, imagine and admire what it is doing.
This is what you do best Fran. Eloquent and interesting as always. Keep up the great work. Thank you.
My father worked for Teleregister in the 1950's through 1970's. He was a repairman for the "Big Board" at the NYSE and used to bring broken parts home for me and my brother to play with. We made up all kinds of stuff with these devices. So fun to see this video! Thanks.
Yes. Fans of the TV series Mission: Impossible (1966 to 1973) have seen these digital displays - and other similar ones in many scenes. Thanks for sharing the info on these neat early digital displays.
Teleregisters are prominently featured as part of the bomber fail-safe device in Mission: Impossible - "Recovery" (Season 2, Episode 25 - 1968) and also as the safe's time-lock from "A Game of Chess" (Season 2, Episode 17 - 1968)
Since you mentioned escapements, it occurs to me that a half dozen of these displays, properly configured, could make a really cool clicky clock.
Forget about the mechanics, that font is absolutely amazing.
These displays are very similar in operation to score reels on early electromechanical pinball machines from around the same era. I'd suggest checking out Joes Classic Video Games channel... they have several (dozen) repair videos on electromechanical pinball machines (and later stuff too) where he goes into detail of their operation including displays, bonus counters and other cool stuff. EM pinball machines have an artistry to them that modern electronics just aren't capable of
I was about to say the same thing.
For reference, here's a recent video repairing (among other things) one of those displays. ua-cam.com/video/nBLQA_TNwvI/v-deo.html
@@Shamino0 Lol... knew it was going to be a Joe's video before even clicking the link. It really is insanely interesting how they accomplished these things with the technology of the time.
That new intro never gets old-it’s absolutely perfect. A wall full of these teleregister displays must’ve been quite loud with all the mechanical clattering. We snicker at pulse phone systems now, but it allows the elegant simplicity of being able to accomplish so much with only 2 or 3 contacts. It would be interesting to see the controller that produced the pulses to operate these displays, but I’m sure it was enormous and is long gone. The vertical axis of the barrel forces the display space to be really narrow compared to the overall width of the unit. Kind of interesting to compare to horizontal axis barrels like odometers. It also makes me appreciate why Heathrow’s iconic flip displays are made the way they are-the two pieces allow a greater area of each unit to be used for characters.
I do wonder who designed the typefaces for all these cool displays that Fran digs up for us.
they always seem to look amazing dont they? :)
Hi Fran
Bill B here and I worked for Teleregister starting in 1959 to 1988. The indicator that you have there was part of the Stock Boards that Teleregister provided stock quotation from 1930 till 1968. Your explanation of how it operated is basically correct. Everytime a price was updated the indicators in that field would first be cleared to blank and then pulsed to the desired number. Clearing the indicators to blank provided a way of knowing where the indicator was.
One area that you were amiss is the operating voltage. It was 48 to 54 volts. The pulse rate was about 20PPS and the duty cycle was 50% The clearing pulses always numbered 10 and it insured the indicator would be at the blank location. Then the lower contact would be grounded and anywhere from 0 to 10 pulses would spin the indicator to the desired number.
12:38 - cool Texas Tnstruments vintage calculator.
It made me feel nostalgic for my TI-99 Computer.
love the font. interesting explanation of a clever mechanism
An ingenious and surprisingly complex display. I'm enjoying this series of old switches, lamps and displays.
So imagine a room with massive Teleregister displays busily working. I want to hear that sound!
Thanks Fran.
The two oval openings on the top are the sockets where the 'lock' popped in when you slid it into the rack. You needed to release the lock manually (which required a special tool) in order to extract it from the rack.
That TI-30 brings back some memories!
Hi Fran. Greatly enjoy your channel, particularly those featuring vintage display tech. In UK some rail control centres of the late 1950s to early 70s used very similar rotary displays made by Sodeco to store and display four-character train IDs. These tracked around schematic representations of the network by applying a train of ten pulses for each character when a train passed a trackside signal out in the field. The pulses would first rotate the source display round to a home position then be switched to the destination display for the remainder to count up to the previously stored value. All based on telephone exchange type equipment, off-stage storage of an ID used rotary selectors and the operators entered IDs using old-fashioned rotary telephone dials. A very simple system conceptually, but the displays were maintenance-intensive and were all changed out for various alternative displays over the years before the old control panels were themselves superseded fully by computer screen-based technology. When I was a trainee back in the early 80s, there were still a few of these displays around but they were gone very soon after that. Swindon Panel Society have such an old control panel at the Didcot Railway Centre museum with an operations simulator under the hood. For the train number display, the panel is currently still equipped with the display screens that were there at decommissioning in 2015, but there's a project to restore these mechanical oddities on part of it, along with some of the other displays used over its history. Here's a video of one of the displays in action. ua-cam.com/video/TsF_Tqr_kr4/v-deo.html
These would make an interesting electro-mechanical clock I think.
...the clock would be bundled with earplugs ;-) Cheers! S
Imagine how it must have sounded to have an entire wall of these firing constantly.
More cool display stuff! The first thing this reminded me of was a synchronous clock system. (Master clocks like schools and airports.) The Simplex system used a setup kinda like that so at the 59th minute, it would open the input lead and no advance until a pulse went thru the other contact, setting it to 00 and reconnecting the input again. So a few extra pulses would insure all clocks started correctly. And, as others noted, very like a pinball score reel. For resetting the reels to 00000 at the start the reset relay would route a bunch of fast pulses from the score motor thru a contact on the reel that would drop out at 0. Love that "chunk, chunk, chunk" sound as several reels reset. (My pin has four banks of 4 reels each, so can be a bit noisy!) Love EM pins. A lot more work to maintain than electronic pins, but often more responsive and tune-able. And very satisfying to get back to full speed and function! Mechanical logic is fun... Stu
All of your videos need to be saved and stored, they are pure gold. Please keep making them
I learn more from some of your casual comments than I have from hours of study. You are an incredible teacher.
I love these electromechanical devices and they throw me back to a time in history to when things like this were magical. I can only imagine the sound of a wall of these things doing a zero reset.
Those would be super cool if they had radium luminescent painted displays
Oh, those were the days... So much health-threatening stuff.
The paint does look like it though, it has a greenish yellow tint.
@@guffaw1711 Eventually it decays to a stable state. It could be radium indeed!
Very interesting. Coming from a digital hardware design background, it is refreshing and I enjoy the vintage “analogish”’ equipment experimental videos. Nice job. Thanks.
That description works too ! As an FPGA developer, anything mechanical is analogish :-)
"Still Amazing! 1950's Teleregister"
No, YOU'RE still amazing Fran!
Your calculator brings back memories of when I had one .
I am old enough to have been alive in 1959 when these were built. If you could use your amazing talents to make an electronic machine to transport me back to that era I would be very grateful Fran. Getting bit fed up with so called life today !
Can you imagine how it would be working in a stock office where you had hundreds of these things CLACK CLACK CLACKING away all day?
Maddening. That'd be a word. :)
My uncle was the lead engineer at a small town switching station back in the day of the 10x10 selector relays. He took me in to check it out once. It was very loud. I imagine this would be similar though probably not nearly as many kerchunks per second as a room with thousands of line selectors in it.
@@John_Ridley
Or a room of accounts with 100 electric Friedan calculators, or a typing pool office with 100 electric typewriters.
About as bad as the boss nag nag naging.
Some don't have to imagine.....
sweeeet. that was way more simple than i was initially thinking. good design. thank you fran!
Your videos are the only ones I continue to watch during the credits. The song is so catchy and charming
The patent drawings show some really cool designs. US2737650A Including the copper dial plates. EDIT found the rack in which these slide, it's at edit 6.
EDIT 9 Found the actual patent drawing for the unit in the video US1979028A. The ratchet mechanism dates back to 1932!!! Whoa. This baby is even older than the 50's.
Edit 2: US2617870A is also interesting.
Edit 3: whoa, check this one out. US3245074A yeah, i fell down the hole.
Edit 4: another variant US2737650A
Edit 5: On the original patent, one of his partners (if that's what you call them) had this one US1890878A
Edit 6: JACKPOT found the rack in which the dial is set, check this baby out. US2117661A
This comment deserves more likes.
12:40 a vintage TI-30 calculator!
I have one of those. It was a gift from one of my aunts when I was a teen back in the '80s.
The manual was bigger than the calculator!
I have since moved to Texas and live within half-an-hour of Texas Instruments
Fran - you always do cool stuff, but this series on old display technology is absolutely outstanding! Thank you!
Clever little unit... Always enjoy seeing how carries are implemented on older devices like these!
Ha ha this intro is exactly what I wanted to see. SUCH a GREAT video opener!
Thanks, Fran. Beautifully analyzed and explained, as always. Imagine the sound of hundreds of these being updated with stock prices. Four would make a rather nifty clickety-clackety clock, driven via a microprocessor, of course. Why not mix the old and the new? Looking forward to whatever you dig up next!
I truly appreciate your incredible knowledge!
Great series. Really interesting to see the evolution of these displays. Hope that there are more to come!
So cool! Reminds me of the rotary step-by-step relays in the old phone systems I used to scavenge!
I guess that the isolation at the blank Display part could be used for leading zero removal too. Excellent piece of kit and video.
My father worked for this company selling these to stock brokers in NYC. Awesome, thanks for this!
Fran, I worked as an engineer for the Teleregister Corporation AKA Bunker Ramo Corp in Stamford CT. In the nid 60s. Be happy to answer any questions you may have. Also, I like to comment that the numerical indicator you have was also used by the New Haven railroad, banking industry and a small installation in Denver Colorado for the United Airlines system.
I can only imagine the awesome sound a board would've made when reset all to blanks and the clunking noise all day during use
Massimo, Fran et. al - I am old enough to remember when these were the displays used in Chicago at O'Hare Airport and the two downtown Chicago train stations in the early 1960's. Periodically they'd cycle the entire wall-sized display to "blank" and regenerate it with new flight / train numbers, gates / tracks, and arrival / departure times. I distinctly remember the clack-clack (pause) clack-clack of the double-pulse advancement. But my distinct recollection is that the displays would all sequence to "clear" simultaneously, but then all the lines would re-build from left to right (or right-to-left, maybe), because we'd have to pause to wait for the new information to appear.
Thanks for digging this weird stuff up, Fran!
these videos are endlessly fascinating.
Hey, for me the calculator is vintage enough! I just about remember those. Great video.
I still use mine from Junior High circa 1977 and it didn't have the inverse tangent error of the first versions. Just have to remember to remove the battery when I'm not using it for long periods. The battery goes dead since the OFF switch is a soft-Off function.
Love the TI 30 calculator
Love the typeface used in the display. Spent a few minute looking for it, but didn't find anything right off the bat. Love the path these display videos have take you! Thanks Fran. :)
I did find this though. (a lot to dig through) www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-C13-f74621aa0e59172343ec89356c7e6ee8/pdf/GOVPUB-C13-f74621aa0e59172343ec89356c7e6ee8.pdf
I'm in the UK and I bought something very similar to this in about 1970, I used it as a call counter on a telephone answering machine I designed. One difference was that mine was fully enclosed, I don't recall if it had a blank position.
Love the graphics, the style is timeless, I hope to see these stylish numbers come back in media such as tv
Pull-over from the Art-Deco of the late forties I would imagine. Very similar indeed.
Those numbers are in a beautiful font. Awesome display!!
They look luminescent though, thinking about the video you made last time about not so healthy clockfaces and -hands.
But i wouldn't let that stand in the way..
Interesting video, Fran! (Also like the photo of the TWA Constellation model at 2:25!)
12:49 She's using a Texas instruments TI-30 calculator. I had that same exact calculator in High School 1976-77. Now that is old school....and way cool. Rock on Fran!
Thank you for this interesting content.
This is just the sort of thing my dad would see and try to build himself. Back in the sixties, he'd have coil forms, masonite, brass screws and spools of enameled magnet wire to make his own latching relays. It was fun to him.
Fran, thank you for showing these kind of awesome displays, and with so much info. it's really nice to learn about these things!
Cool stuff Fran, I love seeing how this old things work
Marvelous work Sherlock !...cheers.
The first video of yours I watched was the one on the nimo tube and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Back when the Pennsylvania Railroad ran Suburban Station in Philly, the status of arriving and departing trains was shown on a lovely board near the ticket booths with times shown with mechanical digits like these. I think the ticketing system was Teleregister as well.
"As high*speed digital computers, magnetic storage units and
other electronic components were perfected, the company advanced rapidly in the field of special purpose electronic engineering. TELEREGISTER was the first (working with engineers of a leading airline) to design and install a successful magnetic drum
system for commercial use. This pioneer system, TELEREGBTER'S Magnetronic Reservisor, has since been adapted as the first electronic reservations control system for use on America's railroads."
s3data.computerhistory.org/brochures/teleregister.specialpurposesystems.1956.102646324.pdf
"That's just not how this works." Sometimes that really is all that can be said. :D
awesome reed switches. Throwing sparks is a great thing.
Reminds me of the old airport schedule boards. Very cool.
Hey Fran... 🌺
Wonder?... Was there a control board to operate these displays?... If so,... I wonder what it looked like, and how it was operated?
Very Cool Vlog Fran! 😎👍
THANX FOR SHARING! 🤗
Blessings: James...
II appreciate all of your videos! Thx from germany!
About the same vintage, in telephone exchanges there were devices known as "uniselectors" that work in much the same way, except that instead of having a display, they moved wiper contacts to select output contacts. There may be one set of contacts in to 20 or so sets of contacts out.
The reason I mention it is that they were wired so that when a call cleared, they would reset to the start position (equivalent to the b lank on those displays), which was all done by contacts on the uniselector. I'm wondering if there is a use of those two contacts relative to earth that does the same thing. When you showed it working, the pulse on the upper contact advanced the display, I'm wondering if connecting power from the case to the lower contact causes it to do an auto-reset? It may not, it's just a hunch.
You're going to hate me for this, my teletype workshop in a telephone building was in the room where these "counters" were installed in a huge array. The clickety clack didn't bother me much, they were pretty quiet compared to a Model 35 Teletype banging away. The counters slid in from the front and made contact with contacts at the back. There were single digit counters by row and column and then multi-digit ones in the rows and columns. When they switched over to fully computerized counting systems, they turned them all off and I was amazed at how quiet it got in there. I was there when they tore out all the old equipment, just throwing all of the counters into big plastic rolling carts which they took out and dumped to be taken to a bulk recycler. I "salvaged" a few of the single and multi digit counters to use with my model railroad, but that project also got scrapped in favor of computerization. Eventually I just tossed them myself.
Although telco standard battery was 48 to 52 volts, the phone companies did use other voltages in and around the offices, and 12V is easily derived from 48V. Along side various switches and frames, you would find little bakelite blocks with several different voltages present in order to facilitate testing.
Nice forensic analysis of technology that drove the financial and the airline industry in my childhood.
Amazing how the were able to cram the numbers so close.
I’m diggin’ the 40+ year old TI-30 calculator. I had one just like it in high school in my physics class in ‘76-‘77. I think it cost about $30 which was a good some of money back then. Brings back some great memories.
Now that is nice, showing electromechanical devices with long nails ...nice !
Love the FranLab logo on your shirt!
November 17 1958 I was 8 days old ! The display is wearing better than me.
You could be my grandfather xD
@@dragonslayerornstein387 who knows that might be true.
Get your ratchet and pawl checked out soon!
@@deadfreightwest5956 could well be too late
As others have pointed out, this works the same way EM pinball displays work. I suspect the upper leaf switch was the reset circuit that was senta series of 10 pulses that guaranteed the home blank position. Afterwards, numeric data was pulsed in through the lower leaf terminal. The case would have been the common ground.
I also wonder if the working voltage was 6.3 volts, which was at that time very common as it was the same used for supplying tube filaments, and tube gear was still the prevalent technology of the time. In fact, the solenoid may well be designed for ac power, which had an added benefit of not causing the large emi kickback when the magnetic field collapsed - EM pinballs used AC solenoids for that same reason.
Still very interesting - I have not seen that specific display before. Love it!
It's sort of stuff, how big is to run stock market information systems is absolutely amazing. Thanks for doing this one Fran
I was browsing eBay because I was watching your display videos and I almost bought the exact listing on eBay
When I was a kid my grandad had mini traveling displays (like the zipper on Times Square). Had a paper band. Punched it out to read like letters. Ran on a clock type motor. Wish I still had it. Skys the limit for electromechanical displays. I used to work on central clock systems. They got extremely elaborate.
I remember these.. bought them surplus a very long time ago.
Hi Fran. I bet you never suffered one moment of boredom ever in your life. LOL. awesome bits of info.
Fun to see the TI calculator. I spent 50 hours wadges to buy a 6 function TI for my physics class in 1974.
I've always wanted a TI-59 :-)
It was amazing to watch the prices of electronic calculators in 70's as they went from unobtanium to being sold in convenience stores.
@@michaelcarey TI-59 with PC-100A... awesome! I own both... and an SR-56
my granpa had to pester his boss for months to get a programmable calculator, and when he left in the 90s computers were at every desk.
Really cool. Thanks.
Interesting and educational as always. Keep up the great work!
That is a nice device that, as a fun project, can be reproduced with 3d printing, small solenoid and a few wires. I did a note, to return to this, when I will have free time
FRAN, You are way GROOVY, I Love you.
These things are just fascinating. The things they thought up to make the most of what they had at the time.
This is very similar to an electromagnetic pinball score reel. You might enjoy having a look at one of those sometime! Or better yet a whole EM pinball.
i love your vids !
gotta go to sleep now because in poland its 1am
gonna watch the video tomorrow !
An array of these must have sounded so crazy in action.
Great find Fran
the 1950s teleregister and the 1970s ti30 calculator, quite an era!
I recall seeing a smaller Alpha-Numeric display on a B-52 bomber in an old Cold War film.
It was used for receiving coded messages from command. I remember it making that
click clack noise as the letters and numbers registered on it.
Dr Strangelove?
They had something similar to this in the bomb from Nanny McPhee Returns, the rotors had sharp edges though and may have been servo driven.
LOL@the Texas Instrument calculator. I do miss the red digits though.
Thanks for making me feel archaic. I was born in 1961. I can't believe electronics were this stone age at that time.
Do you have an electro-mechanical pinball machine reel in your collection? This is similar, in a way.
Yep, reminds me of old pinball machine tech.
Exactly what I was thinking
yes very similar but most of the pinball electro-mechanical displays are vertical perspective whereas Fran's is horizontal
This slo-mo film of pinball mechanisms is fascinating: ua-cam.com/video/Tmg5WOvPKpU/v-deo.html
hahaha i just posted the same thing. I also worked in a really old building, and the elevator used the same kind of switches to stop and start the elevator.
I like the TI calculator right out of the 1970s
I have one myself. Actually I have 2 😉
I'm hearing the sounds of the schedule boards at a very large passenger train station in Chicago, circa 1969.
I can almost hear what the stock exchange boards would have sounded like every time they update. Almost like a telephony stepper switch. Something cool about mechanical stuff like this.