The TV Typewriter is a video terminal that could display two pages of 16 lines of 32 upper case characters on a standard television set. The design, by Don Lancaster, appeared on the cover of Radio-Electronics magazine in September 1973.[1]
The magazine included a 6-page description of the design but readers could send off for a 16-page package of construction details. Radio-Electronics sold thousands of copies for $2.00 each. The TV Typewriter is considered a milestone in the home computer revolution along with the Mark-8 and Altair 8800 computers.[2][3]
Sometimes the term was used generically for any interactive computer display on a screen; until CRT displays were developed, the teleprinter was the standard output medium.
- ^ Lancaster, Don (September 1973). "TV Typewriter". Radio Electronics. 44 (9). New York: Gernsback Publications: 43–52.
- ^ Freiberger, Paul; Swaine, Michael (2000). Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer. New York: McGraw-Hill. pp. 35–36. ISBN 0-07-135892-7. "A giant step toward the realization of the personal-computer dream happened in 1973, when Radio Electronics published an article by Don Lancaster that described a 'TV Typewriter'."
- ^ Ceruzzi, Paul E. (2003). A History of Modern Computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 226. ISBN 0-262-53203-4."One influential project was the TV-Typewriter, designed by Don Lancaster and published in Radio-Electronics in September 1973."