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Ken Shirriff

The teleprinter was mounted in a storage locker in the Shuttle middeck, one level below the flight deck. 9/12

Eleven storage lockers in the shuttle, to the left of the airlock. One locker is indicated with an arrow. The teleprinter was not installed for this photo. Photo by DMolybdenum
Mission Specialist Thagard getting output from the teleprinter on the Shuttle.
A closeup of the storage lockers. The connectors for the teleprinter are on the front of the storage locker door, with wires attached. The neighboring storage locker is labeled "Bees", as it contained 3300 honeybees for a science experiment.
3 August at 15:23 | Open on oldbytes.space
12 comments
Ken Shirriff

We managed to get the printer operational. This wasn't easy because the rubber rollers had turned to liquid, gumming up the mechanism. CuriousMarc carefully disassembled the printer, cleaned all the parts, and realigned the hammers. 10/12

youtube.com/watch?v=EDeL15amsu

3 August at 15:24 | Open on oldbytes.space
Ken Shirriff
Ken Shirriff replied to Ken

Credits: printer restoration done with CuriousMarc, @tubetime, and Mike Stewart. Printer provided by Marcel. Shuttle photos from catalog.archives.gov. Locker photo from DMolybdenum, drawing from the military teleprinter manual.
12/12

3 August at 15:27 | Open on oldbytes.space
Peter replied to Ken

@kenshirriff @tubetime that is incredibly cool. It’s a shame the YouTube video wasn’t longer showing the reverse engineering effort undertaken. I love all your work as it’s quite extraordinary what was built so quickly with such engineering skills.

3 August at 19:32 | Open on mastodon.nz
Ken Shirriff replied to Peter

@plambrechtsen @tubetime CuriousMarc will make a video on the restoration at some point.

3 August at 22:17 | Open on oldbytes.space
Peter replied to Ken

@kenshirriff @tubetime your AGC rebuild series is still one of my favourite on YouTube.

3 August at 22:46 | Open on mastodon.nz
chico replied to Ken

@kenshirriff
This is amazing. I think I now know where some espionage movie title sequences with typed characters showing up out of order come from: a teleprinter.

5 August at 8:55 | Open on mstdn.social
Valtteri Koskivuori replied to Ken

@kenshirriff @tubetime Wonderful restoration! Tangentially related, I read that the optional copier for the DEC VT52 used electrolysis to print onto damp paper using a helical electrode on a spinning drum. I found drawings and docs, but as far as I can tell, there are no working units that have been demonstrated on video anywhere. Would be really cool to see that in action! Very few terminals seem to have ’add water’ as a regular maintenance item 😄

Screenshot of page 6-7 of the VT52 DECScope Maintenance Manual
15 August at 9:41 | Open on mastodon.social
Richie Rich

@kenshirriff CuriousMarc is such a cool guy. What a freak. 😎🤖

3 August at 15:35 | Open on hessen.social
Mer-fOKxTOwl
Ken Shirriff

@glowl What could go wrong with bees on a Space Shuttle? Appropriately, the experiment was sponsored by HONEYwell.

Photo from airandspace.si.edu/collection-

The bee habitat box that flew on the Shuttle for a student experiment. It has three wooden frames mounted in a box with meshing.
3 August at 15:40 | Open on oldbytes.space
Mer-fOKxTOwl replied to Ken

@kenshirriff i remembered there being something real about that, i assume the "bees" in the picture i initially answered to is an acronym for something else?

3 August at 15:44 | Open on chaos.social
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