#friden

The Singer Friden 1166 Electronic Calculator - 1970.

Large Scale Systems Museum (LSSM) - mact.io - Pittsburgh, PA

An early "desktop" computer, the Univac Digital Trainer: a few were built in the 1960s to train U.S. Navy technicians on digital computer technology. This machine was my first exposure to computer programming as a new Univac employee in 1965. The computer had 512 words of 15 bits each: the user interface was through the Friden Flexwriter, which had a 7-bit paper tape punch/reader, or directly in binary through the front panel register indicator-switches, which were lit with neon bulbs. The instruction set was similar to the production-model 30-bit, 32,768 word (a bit less than 128 KB) computers that used Model 35 teletypes, 556-frame/per inch 10.5-inch reel-to-reel magnetic tape drives with mechanical tape loop buffers, and a 5-MB removable hard drive, which fit snugly in an 8'x16' room. The credit-card-sized circuit cards ( which filled both front and back on this desktop machine) were built with discrete components--diodes, transistors, resistors, and capacitors, two transistors and a half-dozen diodes for each bit in each register, and the memory was a stacked array of tiny ferrite beads (cores), with three or four wires (row, column, bit plane sense/inhibit) passed through the holes to switch and sense the magnetic direction, one core per bit. The memory arrays were built by hand on a vacuum table to hold the cores in place while threading the wires. The memory units had to be re-tuned periodically to balance the electric currents to run without errors.

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Friden Flexowriter photos and video

early mechanical word processor

via Retrofair Vintage Ads & Prints