
The IBM MT/ST (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter, and known in Europe as MT72
[) is a model of the ]IBM Selectric typewriter
The IBM Selectric (a portmanteau of "selective" and "electric") was a highly successful line of electric typewriters introduced by IBM on 31 July 1961.
Instead of the "basket" of individual typebars that swung up to strike the ribbon and page ...
, built into its own desk, integrated with magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...
recording and playback facilities, located in an attached enclosure, with controls and a bank of relays. It was released by IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
in 1964.
Description
The MT/ST records text typed on 1/2" magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...
, approximately 25 kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for Computer data storage, digital information.
The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix ''kilo-, kilo'' as a multiplication factor of 1000 (103); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000&nbs ...
s per tape cassette, and allows editing and re-recording during playback. It was the first system marketed as a word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features.
Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...
. Most models have two tape drives, which greatly facilitated revision and enabled features such as mail merge
Mail merge consists of combining mail and letters and pre-addressed envelopes or mailing labels for mass mailings from a form letter.
This feature is usually employed in a word processing document which contains fixed text (which is the same in ...
. A module adds a third tape station, to record the combined output of playback from the two stations.
The MT/ST automates word wrap
Text wrapping, also known as line wrapping, word wrapping or line breaking, is breaking a section of text into lines so that it will fit into the available width of a page, window or other display area. In text display, line wrap is continuing on ...
, but it has no screen, automated hyphenation (soft hyphen
In computing and typesetting, a soft hyphen (Unicode ) or syllable hyphen, is a code point reserved in some coded character sets for the purpose of breaking words across lines by inserting visible hyphens if they fall on the line end but remain i ...
s were available), or concept of the page; pages have to be divided and numbered by the human operator during playback. Instruction manuals taught the operator the importance of listening to the sounds of the machine during playback. The backspace key backs up the tape so a character could be recorded over; there is also a true backspace code, which allowed overstruck characters, like ''á''. Insertion capabilities are limited; one can insert while copying from one tape station to the other. On a single tape one null character
The null character is a control character with the value zero. Many character sets include a code point for a null character including Unicode (Universal Coded Character Set), ASCII (ISO/IEC 646), Baudot, ITA2 codes, the C0 control code, and EB ...
per line was reserved for insertions. A "switch code" instructs the playback to switch to the other tape drive. In a cumbersome way, points on the tape can be marked and jumped to.
The MT/ST is not electronic; it implemented its functions through a bank of electromechanical relay
A relay
Electromechanical relay schematic showing a control coil, four pairs of normally open and one pair of normally closed contacts
An automotive-style miniature relay with the dust cover taken off
A relay is an electrically operated switc ...
s.
In 1967 IBM hired Muppets creator Jim Henson
James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, animator, actor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notability as the creator of the Muppets. Henson was also well known for creating ''Fraggle Rock'' ( ...
to produce and direct a short film on the MT/ST; the film, called ''Paperwork Explosion'', was scored by electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott
Raymond Scott (born Harry Warnow; September 10, 1908 – February 8, 1994) was an American composer, band leader, pianist and record producer. Known best in his time as a composer of production music, Scott is today regarded as an early ...
.
Because of its high purchase price, most customers rented the system. The MT/ST became obsolete in the 1970s, when it was displaced by floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...
-based systems. IBM discontinued support in 1983.
Users
IBM's largest German customer, Allianz
Allianz SE ( , ) is a German Multinational corporation, multinational financial services company headquartered in Munich, Germany. Its core businesses are insurance and asset management.
Allianz is the world's largest List of largest insurance ...
, used MT/ST to produce form letter
A form letter is a letter written from a template, rather than being specially composed for a specific recipient. The most general kind of form letter consists of one or more regions of boilerplate text interspersed with one or more substitution ...
s based on prewritten text. "14 23 56", for example, was the "Death Tape", a letter of condolences that requested documents from survivors of the deceased and promised prompt insurance claim
Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to protect ...
processing.
The first novel to be written on a word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features.
Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...
, Len Deighton
Leonard Cyril Deighton ( ; born 18 February 1929) is a British author. His publications have included cookery books and works on history, but he is best known for his spy novels.
After completing his national service in the Royal Air Force, D ...
's 1970 Second World War historical novel ''Bomber
A bomber is a military combat aircraft that utilizes
air-to-ground weaponry to drop bombs, launch aerial torpedo, torpedoes, or deploy air-launched cruise missiles.
There are two major classifications of bomber: strategic and tactical. Strateg ...
'', about an RAF Bomber Command
RAF Bomber Command controlled the Royal Air Force's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. Along with the United States Army Air Forces, it played the central role in the Strategic bombing during World War II#Europe, strategic bombing of Germany in W ...
raid over Germany, was written on the MT/ST.
The MT/ST was also used as a data entry device for early issues of the '' RILM Abstracts'' scholarly publication at the City University of New York Graduate Center
The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY Graduate Center) is a public university, public research institution and post-graduate university, postgraduate university in New York City. Formed in 1961 as Divi ...
. Cartridges created on the MT/ST were read by an IBM 2495 Tape Cartridge Reader onto an IBM System/360
The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...
mainframe
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...
for further processing before being sent to be printed.
MT/SC
The IBM MT/SC (Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer) appeared in 1967. It is an output device which plays back tapes recorded and edited on the MT/ST. It is physically similar to the MT/ST, but its tape unit has only one tape reader. Built into the desk, instead of the Selectric typewriter, is an IBM Selectric Composer, previously an unautomated device. It uses typeballs similar but not interchangeable with those of the Selectric, with three type sizes (10, 12, and 15 characters per inch), fractional interword spacing, bold, ''italic'' (but not ''bold italic''), and a variety of serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...
and sans-serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...
typefaces, such as Bodoni
Bodoni (, ) is the name given to the serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in the late eighteenth century and frequently revived since. Bodoni's typefaces are classified as Didone (typography), Didone or modern. Bo ...
, Univers
Univers () is a sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a Grotesque (typeface classification), neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-cen ...
, Times Roman, and the like. It produces fully justified, camera-ready output, but the manual version requires that each line be typed twice, once to calculate the size of the precise interword spaces and a repeat typing to precisely insert them.
The MT/SC automates the Composer, and it prints at approximately the speed of the Selectric typewriter, automating the interword spaces and thus justifying the output. The MT/ST and MT/SC combination (two machines) put the rapid production of camera-ready copy, for the first time, within the budget of a small to medium-sized publisher. However, the need to stop the Composer twice whenever a typeface was changed or italic is used (once to change it and again to change it back), sometimes multiple times in the same sentence, can significantly slow down the procedure. The choice of element to be changed—which typeball would be installed—is manual and uses information given to the operator but not encoded in the data stream. Like a typesetter, for example, the operator needs to know that titles are italicized.
IBM 2495 Tape Cartridge Reader
The IBM 2495 Tape Cartridge Reader allows input from tapes created on the MT/ST to a System/360
The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a family of mainframe computer systems announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and delivered between 1965 and 1978. System/360 was the first family of computers designed to cover both commercial and scientific applicati ...
. The 2495 has a hopper and a stacker that can hold up to twelve tapes. The autoloader loads a cartridge in five seconds, and reads or rewinds at 900 characters per second. It attaches to a System/360 Model 30, 40, or 50 via a multiplexor channel. The OS/360
OS/360, officially known as IBM System/360 Operating System, is a discontinued batch processing operating system developed by IBM for their then-new System/360 mainframe computer, announced in 1964; it was influenced by the earlier IBSYS/IBJOB a ...
utility IEBTCRIN was used to read data from the 2495.
See also
* IBM document processors
* IBM Electromatic Table Printing Machine
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:IBM MT ST
Mt St
Word processors
Computer-related introductions in 1964
Products introduced in 1964
Discontinued products
Discontinued media formats