On Sun, 15 Mar 2015, Harold Hallikainen wrote:

> The first ink jet printer I ever saw was an Olivetti that printed one dot
> at a time. The print head moved back and forth across the paper really
> fast.

Many moons ago I used an Olivetti A5. A really strange machine with a golf=
=20
ball type print head. Anybody else program or use one of these? It was=20
built like a tank and took two strong men to lift it (without the=20
pedistal).

Here's a link to a pic of one if anyone is interested.

http://xcprod.com/olivetti_A5.jpg

The pic is deceptive. It makes it look small. The thing was easily 80cm=20
across (if not more).

It had the most bizar programming language I have ever come across. It was=
=20
kind of like assembler but interpretted. It was so incredibly=20
inconsistant, it looked as though it had been "designed" by committee=20
(half of whom were away with the fairies). You could put it into=20
programming mode and just type code in or print it out. It used paper=20
cards with a magnetic stripe down the side that could store a massive 256=20
bytes of code or data. You loaded code from the cards. To updata a record=20
you had to manually put the card through twice. It was a beast with=20
leavers and gears and pullys inside and yes it made a hell of a noise.

Regards
Sergio Masci
--=20
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