Marcin WicharyThis is a thread of beautiful or interesting computer-y things I scanned at the Museum of Printing this weekend.
(Eventually all of this will be processed and deposited at Internet Archive!)
1. You don’t see a lot of yellow in computing.
10. You could have a 1,000 tries, and you would never guess how VariTyper named its Helvetica knock-off.
14. I associate compact cassettes with cheap home computers, but that hasn’t always been the case.
B Zotto 💪🤪🤳🏼@mwichary This was probably a digital cassette. The form factor (compact cassette) was the same, but unlike the home computers with the audio signals and consumer grade tape decks, more serious systems stored data not as audio but more similar to how a floppy disk saved data. More expensive/complex mechanism and sometimes different tape media too. That stuff was super reliable and good but too $$ for home computers.
@bzotto What! I have never heard of this.
@mwichary Yeah! The distinction often seems elided when you read about this. But basically, the first uses of compact cassettes for data storage were for minicomputers where it didn't make sense to buy the massive reel to reel systems that mainframes used. It was a mini version of that. Allow me to send you some brief historic material I snapshotted at CHM archives. Will email.
@bzotto Thanks!