On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 08:23:18AM -0700, ben via cctalk wrote: [...] > So when did serial printers show up?
1887 if we are to believe Wikipedia's article on teleprinters, although their citation doesn't quite support that date. It's not going to be much later though. The early teleprinters didn't speak RS-232, but that doesn't mean they're not serial printers. A fun factoid is that the modem was invented before the telephone and was intended for the simultaneous transmission of multiple messages down a telegraph line through having a different musical note for each. It wasn't much of a leap of imagination to swap the Morse key for a microphone, and that signalled the end of the electric telegraph.
