From: Brygg Ullmer [ullmer@media.mit.edu] Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 1999 4:05 PM To: Tangible Media Cc: Maggie Orth; V. Michael Bove Jr.; Henry Lieberman; Lee Cambell; Brygg Ullmer Subject: TV Typewriter Cookbook extracts Hello! I'm still chasing down parts of this, but -- here's some text people might enjoy from the "TV Typewriter Cookbook" (from Mike Bove's copy; thanks, Mike!). This is particularly interesting for me in light of Maggie's early comments about the current GUI as a strange "amalgam" of television, typewriter, and pointing device. I'm still investingating a possible earlier MIT use of the "TV Typewriter" term, per the Jargon Index definition I forwarded earlier. I've had some pointers to one of Carl Hewitt's students, perhaps Todd Matson, from Henry Lieberman; and to David Marr from Lee Campbell. --Brygg TV Typewriter Cookbook, by Don Lancaster (c) 1976 (ISBN 0-672-21313-3) Radio Shack 62-2013 ($3.95) Chapter 1: Some Basics A tvt, or tv typewriter, is any low-cost way of displaying lots of words, numbers, or graphics on an ordinary tv set. The single most important use for a tvt is that of an input/output device for a microprocessor or microcomputer, but the concept of using a low-cost, mass-produced display to present locally generated and used information is incredibly broad. It is so broad that tvt techniques represent a totally new communications media -- a decentralized media that is based on the fast and easy transfer of information rather than the difficult and energy-intensive moving of physical objects, particularly cars and people. So, what can we do with a $30 to $150 machine that puts words and pictures on a tv set? Some of the uses we know of today include: Computer terminals Video games Microprocessor "super front panels" Video titling Deaf communications Calculator readouts Advertising displays Touch typing learning aids Teaching machines Electronic notebooks Remote message centers Cable tv response units Mailing list generators Word processing and editing systems Color graphics displays Political polling Ham rtty Phototypesetting News, weather, and stock displays Community direct-information access systems There are several overlapping ways we can classify the different types of tvt that are available: stand-alone; dedicated; utility; premium; shared internal memory; external memory; input/ouput; and read only (each described in more detail). p76: One of the earliest tvt's (see September 1973 issue of Radio Electronics magazine) made extensive use of shift-register storage, and similar registers are still used in many premium computer terminals.