Define "vernier"

On May 15, 6:14=A0pm, "Phil Kangas" wrote: ?

Me too. Switched about twenty years ago.

Dan

I am typing this on a keyboard that is labeled as a Querty keyboard but I am using it as a Dvorak keyboard. Most all operating systems have a way to swap the key layout. I am using Ubuntu and have it so that my wife uses it as a Querty and I use it as a Dvorak.

If you can type well with a Querty keyboard, there is not much reason to change. But I do not have great finger dexterity and never got so I could touch type with a Querty keyboard. Took me about two months to get so I could touch type using the Dvorak layout.

If you have the time , you might read up on the Sholes ( or querty ) keyboard. Sholes made one of the earliest typewriters. It had no springs to return the keys , just used gravity. So a fast typist would jam the keys. So he used software to solve that problem. He changed the layout so people could not type as fast.

Dvorak was a U of Washington professor that got a gov contract to improve the keyboard back in the great depression. The gov was going to change to the new layout, but world war II came along and large numbers of the existing model of typewriters were purchased.

Dan

Actually, I never saw an Autovon phone. None of my duty sections rated one. A very small AFRTS Radio & TV station, and the Weathervision section at Ft. Rucker. The only suppliers we used outside of regular supply channels had 800 numbers.

No, I just place the call. ;-)

THEY may call it a dial tone, but I call it annoying. It has noise & hum that the old mechanical ring generators didn't. :(

Actually, the phone has an electronic phone book that sends the DTMF for about 99% of my calls. :)

Use lots of electricty & underpay the poor engineer?

The trick is to still be able to see those bitty lines without a magnifier. But, I trust a vernier as much as a good digital. Dials on the other hand....

Strowger was an undertaker; he developed dial phone technology because he thought that local switchboard operators were sending his customers to a competitor.

I still have a few dial phones in use here, they populate extensions #30 through #39 on our 510A1 via a "basic" card which allows POTS type phones to be used...you need to dial 9 for an outside line, otherwise you can only access the other phones within the system...probably I could add a few crank sets where there's no need for dialing out.

Yep -- the somewhat paranoid undertaker who was obviously in the wrong profession. :-)

Of course, once Ma-Bell started using the switches (in exchanges not busy enough to justify a crossbar exchange), they could not call them by their proper name, and instead called them "10x10"s.

Enjoy, DoN.

I've done that (300 series phones, the hookswitch on the 500 series ones was a bit sluggish for that), and also dialed (the last two digits only) using the "A" relay on the Strowger switch.

Nope.

Only those who have not been believably threatened by Xerox. :-)

I believe that it was applied to seed scattering well before that.

Enjoy, DoN.

That for sure; he was a stickler for procedure, and had us note it during every lab session. I remember there were a few labs in thermo when it was needed for the calculations, as it affected the boiling points, but I'd have to dig out my lab notes for more examples.

Jon

I don't think that the operating system can do much with the keyboard which is built into a stand-alone glass-tty terminal. And lacking the source to the AT&T's 3B1/UNIX-PC/7300 (SysVr2 with BSD and SysVr3 extensions), I can't do much with the keyboard encoding there. (And before you say "Linux", it has its own hardware virtual memory system which is limited to 4MB virtual memory, and 4MB max physical RAM

-- not enough to support the Linux versions which were available even at that time. (68010 CPU, FWIW).

And even less information about the Tektronix 6130 (National Semiconductor 16032 (or was it 32016?) CPU. And the motivation for keeping the existing OS is the IEEE-488 interface which is very nicely integrated into the BSD 4.2 variant which Tektronix called "uTek". Again, before source was freely available for the later versions of BSD.) And try the Integraph Interact32/C using the Fairchild clipper as the unix CPU, and an 80186 to load the OS into the chopper. Dual-headed X11 and a *big* built-in digitizing tablet and puck as a mouse. That one at least had its own keyboard, and given the source you *might* be able to re-code the keycaps. The Tek above, while it did have a workstation version available, I don't have the framebuffer for it, so it is purely serial port and/or ethernet for terminal operation.

And for the Sun workstations, while you might be able to re-interpret the keyboard while running under the OS, you would have problems with certain things which are interpreted below the OS level. For example, the key combination "L1-A" (or later "Stop-A" -- different labels on the same key) were used to drop out of the OS to the monitor ROM (OBP -- Open Boot Prom), and certain other similar combinations would do things like resetting the CMOS settings to default, and reboot to single-user mode, and the like. It is hard enough remembering which do what with the current keycap locations. Add swapping between QWERTY and Dvorak and you add more confusion.

Oh yes -- And some of my computers expect to be connected to a Teletype ASR-33 -- and I doubt that you would find a Dvorak keyboard version of that, either. (Or, anyone who *likes* to type on it. Round plunger keys which required enough force so you could balance a broom on a keycap without pressing it hard enough to send a character. :-)

And I can type quite well. Getting a computer really speeded up my typing over the decades.

I knew about that. It -- and the Dvorak keyboards were well written up in the early days of the computer hobby magazines -- Byte, and Kilobaud.

Yep -- right idea, wrong time. If it had taken hold, I would have learned that system (though probably not learned on the old skeleton typewriter, which predated the invention of the Dvorak keyboard) -- and computers would come with it by default.

Enjoy, DoN.

I have some 'phones with the 16-key pad. The markings are different from the Autovon numbers, but they send the same tone pairs. I could have taken one in to work, and likely gotten into a lot of trouble using that button, even though my phones never had it, the wiring was there for it. :-)

The normal Ma Bell exchanges just ignore all four of those pairs, of course.

Enjoy, DoN.

Seeds, for the garden?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

One of my favorite word origins is the word broadcast. It goes back a lot farther than using it to describe what radio stations do.

John

When I got my first cell phone, it was bolted to the wall, inside my van. Handset, bolted to the motor cover. The sales guy dialed a phone number, hit send, and then I heard a dial tone. I thought that was neat. So, yes, I have.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

And you only hear that dial tone when using a copper connected land line. Have you *ever* heard a dial tone on a cell phone?

Not just copper connected land lines. VOIP phones create a dial tone locally. Supposed to be 350Hz + 440Hz in North America.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

"Michael A. Terrell" on Tue, 15 May 2012

Well, you wouldn't want to underpay the rich engineer? (Or is that how he became the poor engineer? Won the lottery, and just kept engineering till the money ran out?)

tschus pyotr

'Kilobaud' was called 'Kilobyte', before the lawsuit.

No. Radio station engineers are mostly contract workers these days. On a tiny retainer, and are paid time & materials to keep the station barely patched together. One that I know was working for over a dozen stations in Central Florida before he told them to shove it, and went to work for a TV shop, repairing flat screen TVs.

"Michael A. Terrell" fired this volley in news:fqydndsEBq5VdC7SnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

They are, now. But I remember a day when I was a "broadcaster" in Central Florida, when there were two ilks of "Chief Engineer" in a radio station.

One type of guy was a true expert in his field, and usually on contract with more than one station, so long as they did not compete for audience.

The other was the "goofy geek" type, who gallumphed into the studio periodically to "tune shit". He had no personality, no particular skills beyond that which anyone having an FCC ticket at the time had (except he had a class-A license, which he lorded over the folks who didn't need one, but could pass the test), and he had absolutely no social skills.

The former came in to fix "real" problems. The latter came in (frequently) to get paid almost nothing to do somewhat less.

LLoyd