Royal's Computer

Royal is one of my favorite typewriter brands. I have all the greats; No. 10, HH, FP, tons of portables. They may not be the prettiest typewriters, but they are very numerous. Did you know that Royal also dipped their toes into computer technology? It's true, but the world of office typewriters and data technology is was not too much of a departure for the largest typewriter company ever. The story is long and complicated and I hope to share some things I learned about this computer.

The Beginning

Not surprisingly, Royal didn't make this typewriter computer themselves. Dr. Stan Frankel working for Librascope of Glendale, CA designed the computer. Librascope manufactured it and presented it at the Automation Show and Computer Clinic show in Chicago.

Paul Kane, in the story to the right , looks like he is not enjoying the Holiday activities.

I can only imagine that Royal sent their VP of R&D (E. H. Dreher) and Senior Project Engineer (I. S. Lerner) to the show with the mission of finding a computer for Royal McBee. They saw this computer from a small engineering outfit owned by a large defense contractor and designed by a little-known computer pioneer. The negotiations are lost to history, but in the end Royal McBee made a move that secured the LGP-30 as a part of the Royal product line.

General Precision and Royal would form a new company called Royal Precision and General Precision's Librascope subsidiary would make the computers. (I want to say that Royal Precision is the best name for a computer company ever devised by the mind of man.) Royal would handle the marketing and sales and develop peripherals for the computer. GPE/Librascope would make the computers and create software. Having recently acquired the Robotyper, Royal had some interesting technology and patents to work with sop peripherals made sense. In addition, Royal had hundreds of sales offices and a sales force that was experienced in getting machines into business settings.

Robotypers worked by having ghostly triplet secretaries marked for death typing on spectral typewriters.

Royal McBee transferred Librascope application engineers to their payroll and started training people how to code for the new computer.

One of the Application Engineers (and programming school instructors) was a man called Mel Kaye who would later go down in computer computer folklore in The Story of Mel.

The Machine

Royal's computer by the standards of the time was better than a desk calculator, but not as good as some of the big iron starting to become available. It was a small (desk-sized) general purpose 32-bit (sort-of) word binary computer.

White sock alert!

As with all old computers, the specifications are amazingly meager:

Type:	General purpose, electronic, digital, single address, fixed binary point, fractional, stored program
Number Base:	2 (binary)
Word Length:	9 decimal digits plus sign (30 binary bits plus sign bit and spacer bit)
Mode of Operation:	Serial (Settle in with a cup of tea!)
Memory:	Magnetic drum, 4096 words, 3 one word recalculating registers.
Clock Frequency:	120 KC (0.00012 GHz is my math correct?)
Access Time:	2 ms. minimum, 17 ms. maximum
Transfer Time:	1 ms. minimum, 17 ms. maximum
Addition Time:	.26 ms. excluding access time
Multiplication or Division Time:	17 ms. excluding access time
Input-Output:	Paper tape or electric typewriter
Size:	Depth - 26", Length - 44", Height - 33"
Weight Uncrated:	740 lbs
Cooling System:	Internal forced air blower
Heat Dissipation:	5000 B.T.U. /hr.
Power Requirement:	115-volt, 60-cycle, single phase, 13 ampere alternating current
Number of Tubes:	113
Number of Diodes:	1350

These specifications come from the LGP-30 Programming Manual.

To save money on memory, this computer used a magnetic drum for RAM. It's akin to using your disk for swap, but in this case it was all swap!

Magnetic drum memory was slow, but with optimization the Librascope boffins were able to get the latency down from 17(microseconds) to 2 microseconds through the careful arrangement of data on the drum. We are all very spoiled with our fast computers, but 2ms seems pretty fast to me. On another note, I don't know what that drum sounded like spinning at 3700 rpm, but I bet it was loud. 

For input/output Librascope used a Friden Flexowriter. I think the overall aesthetics would have been helped with a Royal, but the Flexowriter was common terminal for early computers.

It wasn't much in the way of a computer, but for many colleges and engineering firms it offered the possibility of owning a computer versus renting one from IBM. IBM had notoriously strict lease agreements that would charge a user for anything outside the lease agreement. Big IBMs had panel meters that counted the number of hours in operation. In other words, if you leased a computer for 8 hours a day, any use beyond that 8 hours would incur a fee. Sure, IBM was the name in computers, but cost can definitely be a motivator. In the end, over 500 of these computers were sold.

In this post, I only scratched the surface of this old Royal computer. There is folklore (as mentioned earlier), emulation, and restoration and I plan on taking a deeper dive into this amazing piece of computer history.

Magic Margin on Gopher

The "Old Gadget" part of Magic Margin is a bit of a potpourri. There isn't just one project I am working on and old and gadget are very much up to my discretion. Recently I have taken a trip down memory lane and been playing around with Gopher. I actually remember Gopher because of AzTec.

In the very early 90s, getting online was an expensive prospect for my lower-income family. We couldn't afford Compuserve or Prodigy. Instead, a friend of mine turned me onto a local Freenet called AzTec hosted at ASU. It was a free service where you could dial up to their bank of 2400 baud modems and connect with other computer users.

There was the regular BBS-type stuff on there. Clubs, organizations, and meetings were discussed in community bulletin boards. You had email through Pine or something else. I remember that my email address was tryanpa@aztec.asu.edu -- just typing that takes me back! There was one way to go father afield than our local community; Lynx.

Lynx, of course, is a text-based web browser. I still use it to this day. It's a great tool to have and a fun way to make even the oldest computer part of the internet experience. Being text-based it worked better 20 years ago. Modern CCS and graphic-heavy web pages are notoriously text-limited and make for a poor experience in text-only mode. Interestingly, typecasts are not readable in Lynx. This effectively keeps the prying eyes of Big Brother at bay. (We may want to revisit this for those who are visually impaired.) It's one of the best browsers out there. In addition to being a powerful web browser, it also is a pretty good Gopher client.

Gopher is a unique way to access text on the internet. I think there is a charm about it. It's simple to understand. Most human-readable content is text (although you can use images). The file-folder concept is a departure from the web's interconnected threads. It feels like those early days of computers.

With this memory, I decided to set up my own Gopher hole. I read a few tutorials and decided to use Pygopherd on a Raspberry Pi. I used a popular dynamic DNS service to reroute the traffic to a subdomain of Magic Margin and within a few hours I had a Gopher server running next to my tiki mug collection.

If you have Lynx or another Gopher tool, you can check out the link at:

gopher://gopher.magicmargin.net

There's not much there, but what is there is just for Gopher. It's Gopher premium content!

Vintage Computer Round-Up?

Is anyone out there interested in an Arizona version of a vintage computer festival? There are some old machines that are getting so old, they might hold as much interest in the popular mind as typewriters. If you are interested or keen in being involved in this kind of project (Vintage Computer Round-Up?) let me know in the form below.

The Typewriter, Women, and 1950s Royal Sexism

Historians generally agree that the typewriter was a net positive for women in the workplace,

but these bits of "advice" from Royal certainly clang today. My favorite is the unabashed pleasure she is expected to show at the ringing of a margin bell. 

Thrifting Finds 2019

On this day, the last of 2019, I wanted to share some fun finds from my most recent thrifting adventure.

My friend Tim and I hit the Sun City thrift stores. If you have never spent any time in Sun City, you are missing one of the most bizarre places on earth. Sun City is where every day feels exactly like 2:00pm on a Sunday at your grandmother's house; time moves with all the speed of molasses. It is packed with people, but you never see them. The only suggestion of life is the maniacal whizzing of golf carts on city streets and the white and blue blur of the snowbirds.

While Sun City gives me the feeling that I am sinking slowly to the bottom of a plastic-covered sofa, the thrift stores where very generous to me.

The first item is this very nice Jorgensen clamp. $3.00

It's a clamp. I don't know what else to say. It is large. Largeness is a useful attribute to have in clamps. This is a No. 2. You can get them new for about $30.00

Next, is a nice VFD combination printing adding machine and advanced 4-function calculator. I got it because they keys are wonderful to press. It works. $5.00

I cannot resist American-made wall clocks. This is a Seth Thomas Manager 12 (plug-in). $6.00

The plastic dome is scuffed and scratched, but I can polish that out pretty easily. The brown surround is made of metal and it has a sweep hand. Nice clock for just a little money.

Finally, there is this nice little 13" IBM correcting Selectric II in white. $14.00

It's completely frozen up. No hum when you turn it on, but it was so clean that I couldn't pass it up. I'll invariably take it apart, rub my chin, clear my throat, and take it Bill Wall for analysis. 

The red tongue is missing, but I have three of those sitting in a box in the garage. 

So, that's the haul. Hope you enjoyed the show-and-tell. 

Have a great New Year and I wish you all the best in 2020!

IBM 5291 Keyboard USB Mod

Typewriters are wonderful, distraction-free writing tools. Actually, I don't really believe that. Typewriters are a feast for the senses; the smell, sound, and tactile feel are all part of the magic that is part of non-digital writing. Some very sick people even love the gentle hum of a Selectric's motor. Instead of being distraction-free they are right-distraction devices. The things that draw our attention are all in service to the visceral feel of pure communication.

Even so, we are called on to engage with digital devices. It's a cruel reality of a "modern" world. I don't like typing on a computer, but when I do, I always use mechanical keyboards. You know the kind; clicky, tactile, loud, and ancient. My daily typer is a 1987 IBM Model M. It's a nice keyboard. If you'e never had the chance to use one of these keyboards, you are missing out. On a tuned specimen, nothing compares. If you've used an IBM Wheelwriter before, you have used this type of keyboard.

The Model M's cult following is well documented. There are people who will wax philosophical on the feeling and sound of the buckling spring keyboard. There are actually YouTube videos on the subject, but that is hardly a sigil of eccentricity.

Connoisseurs will tell you that the predecessor to the Model M, the Model F, is even more refined. It's as close to the urkeyboard as you can get (barring beamsprings). This is what I wanted to share with you today.

Bigfoot is what some collectors call this. It is big and heavy. It types beautifully.

I recently completed a USB conversion for this IMB 5291 Terminal keyboard. Most people would think that Soarer's Converter would be the way to go. However, Soarer's is closed-source. It's not being actively maintained. There is also the sudden and strange disappearance of Soarer from the keyboard enthusiast's bulletin boards. These three things prompted me to look elsewhere for firmware. I decided on QMK Firmware. It ticked all the boxes; Atmel support, open-source, current updates, large user-base.

Wiring up the converter was fairly easy. I used a Teensy 2.0 to upload the firmware from the QMK online builder. You can customize, compile, and download all from within a web browser.

Just a little debugging and I was able to start using it on my home computer. I just completed grades using this keyboard and it was so nice to finally use it. As I use it more, I might just make it a permanent daily typer. The sound and feel of this keyboard are a perfect right-distraction.

Rocketeer Keyboard

I am not one for free buzz marketing on my own blog, but I was perusing through the Massdrop site (looking for keytops) and I found this keyboard that is intended to mimic the style of a Hermes Rocket. 

The keytops are double-shot plastic (yum) and it's a pretty nice looking thing. Just thought I would share.

Check out on the Massdrop website: https://massdrop-s3.imgix.net/product-images/massdrop-x-zslane-mercury-rocketeer-mechanical-keyboard/FP/sgyeeoeSlyZcgNUh4muA_CB5A2865-copy.jpg?auto=format&fm=jpg&fit=crop&w=1080&bg=f0f0f0&dpr=2&q=35

Happy Typewriter Day 2019!

As the sun sets on your day of celebration, raise up a typewriter to the memory of Christopher Latham Sholes. Be careful not to drop your typewriter. They are heavy.

Typecasting after an interval

Classic Argus C3 Film Advance Mod

While it's not really a mod it's definitely a useful addition to this classic brick.

It's a classic.

It's also designed to be simple, reliable, and useful.

Not a single curve to be found.

I think it's a great camera, but the ergonomics of the film advance knob leave little to be desired. Winding the knob is not an easy thumb-only affair. That is, until I got on Tinkercad and made this little accessory.

I 3D printed this object and it was a terrible idea. Thick. Clunky. An overabundance of plastic. I went back to the drawing board. This was the result:

The design was better. It used less plastic, but it wasn't easy to use. The thumb-indentations were too shallow to operate with one hand. Back, again, to the drawing board.

I made the thumb-indentations deeper. Really, it's just a six-sided gear, but it works. I printed it and this is how it turned out:

The six depressions make turning the knob quite easy when the camera is up to your eye. You can quickly release the film advance button and turn the knob.


Here's a link to the STL if you want to 3D print your own. The process of making this little accessory made me think about the continuing possibility of a digital parts warehouse for typewriters. Need a key-cap? Print one!

Cameras, Englargers, and Strobsy: An Analog Journey

If you have come this way because of a post on the Film Photography Project website, welcome. If you are here because you are looking for typewriter stuff, you are also in the right place. The typewriter stuff is a little deeper in this blog, but it is still here.

What can I say? Mike at the FFP has been a great help by providing the fledgling photography program with cameras and kind thoughts. He kindly let me ramble on about what I need to do to get this program going. A couple of folks have reached out to me after reading the post and made some very kind donation offers and I can tell you that I am blown away with the kindness of others.

If you want to follow along with my classes, you can visit the class site at http://www.strobsy.com The name is interesting, no? I had originally conceived of a series of tutorials designed to help yearbook students use off-camera flash, but I needed a new site and I had the domain. Maybe the tutorials will come in time.

Try as I might, I cannot live a purely digital life. To be sure, there are some really digital things in my daily experience, but I always come back to analog tools. There's some irony for you; I communicate this on one of the most self-conscious forms of digital navel-gazing ever devised. Blogs are the digital id. Or is that Twitter?

Richard Polt effectively describes my sentiment in the manifesto of the Typewriter Insurgency when he calls for an acknowledgement of the "real over representation/ the physical over the digital/ the durable over the the unsustainable."

I think the time for a Photographic Insurgency is in order. The digital image has devalued the photographic image. I know history. I know that photo editing has a long and unsavory past. I have seen the Stalinist palimpsest. However, there is some value and honor in a photograph of real things. Our species has become embroiled in Manichaean debates on truth and lies; reality versus imagination. Photos may not always tell the whole truth, but they tell 1/30 of a second of truth. Photography is the real over representation.

The most disheartening thing is that you can go online to YouTube and watch countless tutorials on how to use Photoshop to make your pictures look just like the pictures of other people. It's hollow and the pride of craftsmanship is as ephemeral as the digital files they create. However, the creation of a print in a darkroom from a negative you alone created is not just a photo; it's my photo. I created it and I have pride of creation of this thing. Photography is the physical over the digital.

A photographic print is a guaranteed (providing good fixing, rinsing, toning, and storage) century of life. Platinum prints will last longer. I have talked about the digital oubliette before and we are living in an age of garbage that will make up the geological strata of the far future. Planned obsolescence and the newest upgrade are the economic orthodoxy. Film photography breaks down the assumptions of modern convenience by saying longevity, value, significance, and meaning are important values. They should not be ignored.

Typewriters and photography are kindred spirits; both are tools of intimate creativity. The products of which add to the world through their permanence.

I've gone on too long, but welcome to Magic Margin.

I'm Going to the Type-In!

Changing Hands is having a Type-In on June 24th. It's being organized by a Changing Hand's employee who loves typewriters. I plan on going, so I'll see you there.

Pinhole Mania

Earlier today I was stationed over the Trotec laser cutter in our technology lab supervising the cutting of a project for my photography students. In fact, it looks like this:

It's a pinhole camera and I am exceptionally proud of the design. It takes the form of two nested boxes. The inner box holds the film in place and carries the pinhole. If you've ever looked a Kodak Brownie it's of a similar idea. 

 The film size is 4 x 5 and I have used paper negatives and litho film with some success. If you were curious about the specifications here you go:

Focal length: 87mm

Pinhole diameter: 0.39mm

f/221

Angle of view: 86 degrees.

The process of developing this product--for that's what it really is--has been challenging. I needed to keep in mind that this would be a kit for high school students to put together. When coming up with the design based on the material I wanted to use (3mm Baltic birch plywood) I was drawn to the nested boxes. Nice to see Ilford via Walker Camera beat me to the punch. 

The process of assembly had to be streamlined considerably. Everything is easy enough to assemble with a rubber mallet and patience. Even the pinholes are printed in very thin sheets of black styrene. This is upgradable to better materials in the future.

Ultimately, the goal was to have a rugged pinhole camera that students can keep for a lifetime. The outcome definitely meets that goal.

P.S. I am trying to gauge interest in this kind of thing as a Kickstarter or something. I think I could get the price down to $15-20 plus shipping. Would that be of interest to anyone?

P.P.S. Here is a shot using the camera kit. This is the black polystyrene pinhole.

Sewing On-the-Go

If you love typewriters and mechanical things it's natural to like multitools. When you have a screwdriver, can opener, scissors, tweezers and toothpick in one tool you are ready for anything the world can throw at you. I personally love Swiss Army Knives for their design and quality. I also love that there is a vibrant collecting community and an equally strong DIY modding ethic.

Absent in most SAKs is a sewing kit. I know there are some sewing-themed knives made, but without getting into the ins and outs of Victorinox and Wegner and the custom sewing knives made for Bernina, I thought I would try making my own sewing kit in a small SAK.

The first step was to define the problem. I wanted to have a Victorinox Classic SD (the smallest and cheapest SAK) with a full tool compliment including tweezers and toothpick and a place to store some thread, a needle and three buttons; two shirt and one sleeve placket. This, in my mind, was the bare minimum for the kit. Most sewing kits include scissors, but since the SD has a very nice set of scissors already.

From there I sat about thinking about the design. The tweezers and toothpick (T&T) would need to move to the same side. I designed a scale that allowed them both to nestle on one side. The other side of the SAK was free for the sewing kit. The scale itself would serve as a spool for the tread and the needle would held in place with an elastic band.

I got into TinkerCad and came up with these designs: 

A couple of 3D test prints, a little fine adjustment, and a final print:

This is deceptive. The smooth surface is a result of sanding and then spraying with flat black. Then I waxed the paint. It seems counterproductive, but it gives the paint a really nice feel. The elastic band holds it all together. Undo the band and then:

The needle and the thread is revealed. Remove the thread and the access to the buttons is revealed.

Now this little set is ready for all your fashion repair needs. The knife functions still work and overall it's thicker than the old SD, but I think that the thicker scales are more pleasant to use. I'll keep working on iterations. I don't like the idea of the needle not having a more secure storage place. Also, if I could eliminate the elastic band everything would be more secure.

Pinhole MG Filter Adapter

A few months ago a friend gave me an old set of Ilford multigrade filters he used in college. He thought I would get some use out of them in my home darkroom. It's nice to have this set. They are good for a couple of really cool contrast techniques in darkroom printing on multigrade paper. It can really save your bacon with a difficult print.

I wanted to also use these filters with my pinhole camera and multigrade paper. The contrast with the paper negatives can be a little extreme and these filters can tame contrast. However, my filters can't easily be taped to the front of the camera. I had to devise a method to hold them.

The 3 inch filters are designed to go under the lens on a darkroom enlarger. Each filter is mounted in a plastic holder that slides into a corresponding mount attached to the enlarger. I pulled out my calipers, did a little measuaring, and crafted a design in Tinkercad. A hours later and I had this design:

I decided to print it in two pieces on my Monoprice Mini Select and use a fair amount of cyanoacrylate. The grippy bits were printed with the flat side down and the larger filter holder was printed standing up. Because of the tight tolerances required in the filter holder, I didn't want to deal with internal supports. There would be too much friction when I try to install the filter.

This camera has a 90° angle of view and several iterations didn't take this into account. In the end I guessed about the diameter of the cut-outs. The corner of a sheet of paper was a perfect tool to see if there was any obstruction in that 90° angle of view. It looked good.

All of the filters slide nicely into the holder and the fingers grip the bezel around the pinhole. It's sturdy and easy to use.

The next step is to try out the filters with a paper negative. Maybe I'll be able to tame some contrast.

Typewriter Mentor

Last Thursday, my student teacher graduated and I gave him this typewriter as a gift:

Oooh boy, that's a shiny typewriter.

With Marie Kondo whispering in my ear, I stuffed my heart with steel wool and tin foil and made some decisions about my many collections. A few weeks ago I culled the typewriters, keeping the ones that brought me the most joy. Before that, I decided how many slide rules you need to have a collection, but not an obsession. Days before that, I asked myself if I need three of the same Swiss army knives?

The process continues, but I am sure that Joe (my student teacher) will enjoy this typewriter as he begins his journey in teaching.

New for 1947..the OPTO-ELECTIRC INTERFACE

No, it's not a typewriter. Imagine an alternate past where this might be on your desk:

Pretty cool, huh? I took an old desktop mouse and created a 1940s-inspired Opto-Electric Interface. The body is made from basswood and the buttons, screen and screws are all from the hardware store. The vacuum tubes are dead ones that I save every time I service my old TV. In reality I have a big bag full of dead ones that I needed to do something with. I 3D printed a tube holder that would fit in the insert. The screen is also from the hardware store.

The product tag is a toner transfer onto an old bit of disposable aluminum roasting pan roughed up with some 0000 steel wool.

The electrics were dead simple. Move the switches from the PCB to the external ones. I did mess up the traces while I was removing the old switches. In the end I soldered the switches directly to the appropriate IC pins.

You can still get winkle paint and it is a challenge to use. I imagine on warm days it works quickly without a lot of intervention on my part, but is has been cool. Compounding the trouble, I decided to paint the body it was cold and rainy out so you could just imagine me standing in the garage with a hairdryer trying to get this paint to wrinkle.

The body still needs some weathering and aging, but it's wonderfully large and definitely feels like something old.

This proof-of-concept is the first stage in a larger project for a modern computer that has this aesthetic. It will have dials, switches, and lots of knobs. Fun!

Door Prize Winners

Deep in the sub-basement of Magic Margin HQ our UNIVAC has been running the numbers and has identified the three winners of the 7th Phoenix Type-In Door Prize. We had two lovely typewriters to give away along with a copy of Richard Polt's new book The Typewriter Revolution. So without further ado...the paper tape reads:

The Olympia goes to Cameron!

The Remington goes to Candace!

And the book goes to Sierra!

Congratulations to everyone who won. I will contact the winners personally over the next couple of days. I hope you had fun at the type-in. It was certainly exciting to meet so many new typewriter fans. I want to thank all the kind people at Changing Hands and First Draft. Without their continued support we couldn't have so much fun looking at typewriters.

I'll post some pictures in my next post.

7th Phoenix Type-In

Get ready for the 7th Phoenix Type-In at Changing Hands and First Draft Bookbar in Phoenix! August 20, 1-4pm. Bring a typewriter and digitally detox.

Happy Typewriter Day 2016!

I hope that you have a great typewriter day. Keep those fingers to the keys.