The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer

Hard to believe there was enough demand for such a thing that it was economically viable -- I guess if you had a secretary that had to produce a lot of copies of virtually the same text, and you wanted it to look genuinely typewritten and not pre-printed... maybe...

Re: The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer

#5

Post by hagbard_c » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 10:42 PM UTC

I used a later derivative of this concept to produce a book while at university. It consisted of a Selectric typewriter with a solenoid-driven interface which connected to a metal box containing a compact cassette mechanism and a few buttons. Type a line, make corrections and hit the carriage return key upon which the result is stored on cassette tape. Recorded lines could be edited, ed-style by replacing sections (characters or words) with new content. Once stored the thing could be used to produce many copies of the same content with pauses for manually typing in addresses etc.

I used it to produce a whole book during which the typewriter motor died just after having typed in the whole thing and just before I was going to have it 'print' the text so we could cut and paste it on stand sheets for offset reproduction. I managed to find a working motor which I installed in the machine upon which I had to re-adjust the whippletree mechanism which aims the ball since the characters ended up everywhere except for where they needed to be. Those were a few intense hours since I had to go by intuition on how this all worked, not having access to a service manual and this being long before the time when you'd just go on the 'net to find one. I got it adjusted and got the book printed by feeding the typewriter with paper and the device with cassette tapes, telling it to print a page, feeding in a new sheet, next page, next cassette tape, etc.

Re: The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer

#6

Post by nxobject » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 10:42 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #4

Hard to believe there was enough demand for such a thing that it was economically viable -- I guess if you had a secretary that had to produce a lot of copies of virtually the same text, and you wanted it to look genuinely typewritten and not pre-printed... maybe...

If you didn't want to shell out for actual typesetting, there might have been a market for smaller organizations that wanted to produce camera-ready copy in-house for printing elsewhere.

Re: The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer

#7

Post by 082349872349872 » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 10:46 PM UTC

tdeck wrote: post #3

Here's an old ad for a later model - the IBM Magnetic Card Selectric typewriter - it demonstrates the functionality pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW_jJjUarp0

I love how after Jane has her copy digitally recorded on the mag card — she then manually writes metadata on its folder, and files it away...

The future was then, it just wasn't very evenly distributed.

Re: The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer

#8

Post by dano » Fri, Jul 05, 2024, 10:46 PM UTC

tdeck wrote: post #3

Here's an old ad for a later model - the IBM Magnetic Card Selectric typewriter - it demonstrates the functionality pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW_jJjUarp0

My father, an attorney, made extensive use of the magcard selectric. He did wills and trusts which required revision based on client feedback or life changes. The ability to edit the document from a saved copy was revolutionary in the early 70's. It also supported stop codes so that the system would print, stop, allow for manual entry of a name or other text, and continue. The client would receive a correction free typed document (no whiteout). All these capabilities are normal after the advent of Wordstar, WordPerfect, Word and others. Having typed school papers on this system helped me understand computers early on.

Re: The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer

#9

Post by adolph » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 12:36 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #4

Hard to believe there was enough demand for such a thing that it was economically viable -- I guess if you had a secretary that had to produce a lot of copies of virtually the same text, and you wanted it to look genuinely typewritten and not pre-printed... maybe...

Absolutely! You had to get basically the same content to all the Glengarry leads, keep broadening your chain mail down line, tremendous opportunity to sell something that changes the paradigm of how a business can scale in the pre computer era.

Re: The IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer

#10

Post by retrac » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 1:13 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #4

Hard to believe there was enough demand for such a thing that it was economically viable -- I guess if you had a secretary that had to produce a lot of copies of virtually the same text, and you wanted it to look genuinely typewritten and not pre-printed... maybe...

Selectric typewriters made something that looked more like print than the typical typewriter. The Selectric type ball mechanism made multiple rapid impressions, producing a crisp dark letter, and the high end models had proportional typefaces. The Composer could even do justification.

An example of Selectric Composer output: http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/images/ps_sco2.jpg