I wrote: >> The digits are among the nicest looking digits that I've ever seen >> on a CRT display, including those on the CDC scopes as well as IBM >> >> console displays. To which Paul responded:
> I have, somewhere, a copy of a paper that describes analog circuits > for > generating waveforms for digits along the lines you describe. > Might have been from MIT, in the 1950s, but right now I can't find > it. > Found it (on paper): "Generating characters" by Kenneth Perry and > Everett Aho, > Electronics, Jan 3, 1958, pp. 72-75. > Bitsavers has it in the MIT/LincolnLaboratory section: > https://bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/lincolnLaboratory/Perry_and_Aho__Generating_Characters_-_Electronics_19580103.pdf Very interesting. Here's a link to the patent for the display system on the Wyle Labs calculator: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/17/51/58/89c19cee6c60e2/US3305843.pdf The concepts are very similar to the paper written up in ELECTRONICS magazine in early 1958 that you found. Your memory is incredible to have been able to have this pop into your mind when you read my description of the way the calculator generates its display. Thank you for looking up this article! It'll provide some nice background for the concepts of generating characters this way when I finally get to documenting the Wyle WS-01/WS-02 calculators in an Old Calculator Museum exhibit. I wonder if the inventor of the display system for the calculator (in fact, the inventor of the entire Wyle Labs calculator architecture) had read this article at some point prior? I scanned through the patent for the calculator display system looking for any reference to the article or any document from MIT relating, and I couldn't find anything. The inventor is still alive, and I have talked to him on the telephone a couple of times. For his advanced age, he is still quite sharp, and remembers a lot of the challenges involved with trying to make a solid-state electronic calculator that would fit on a (large) desktop using early 1960's technology. Here's a link to a little information about the calculator: https://oldcalculatormuseum.com/w-wyle.html It's hard to tell from the photo (from advertising material of the day) how large the machine is, but the dimensions and weight (50 pounds!) are included in the specifications at the end of the page. It's quite a monster. The two models of the machine differed in that the WS-01 utilized a home-brewed(e.g., made entirely within Wyle Labs) rotating magnetic memory as the storage for the working registers (as well as for timing tracks that provided clocking signals). It proved to be very temperamental with many failures in the hands of customers that gave the machine somewhat of a tarnished reputation in the market. A magnetostrictive delay line that was much more reliable replaced the rotating magnetic memory in the re-worked WS-02 model of the calculator. -Rick
