golf ball printer

printer The IBM 2741, a slow but letter-quality printing

device and terminal based on the IBM Selectric typewriter.

The "golf ball" was a little spherical frob bearing reversed

embossed images of 88 different characters arranged on four

parallels of latitude; one could change the font by swapping

in a different golf ball.

This was the technology that enabled APL to use a

non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact completely non-standard

character set. This put it 10 years ahead of its time -

where it stayed, firmly rooted, for the next 20, until

character displays gave way to programmable bit-mapped

devices with the flexibility to support other character sets.

(1994-12-15)