Subject: 132 column (14x11) fanfold paper

From: Tom Uban <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 11 14:16:00 2003

Does anyone know where 132 column (14x11) white (blank) fanfold
paper is still available? Bowater used to make it years ago, but
has since sold that business off...

--tnx
--tom

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From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 11 15:49:01 2003

> has since sold that business off...

A petty correction:
It's 14 7/8, NOT 14. (15 7/8 including the edges).
An incompetent purchasing agent at out college got it confused with
"Legal" paper and ordered enormous quantities of 8.5 x 14 7/8 paper!
(instead of 11 x 14 7/8)

Be sure to consider whether you want white, greebar, or blue bar.
And, there used to be paper available that was VERY handy for printers
that were inconvenient to change paper on, that was 14 7/8, but had
tear-offs not only for the pin feed edges, but also a perf part way over
to also be able to tear it into 8.5 x 11.

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From: Peter Turnbull <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat Apr 12 16:43:01 2003

> It's 14 7/8, NOT 14. (15 7/8 including the edges).

The nominal size sold here is 14.5" (and the stuff in boxes I have here
measures 14 5/8") including the edges.  And that makes sense, because
132 columns is nominally 13.2" (at 10 chars/inch pitch), plus a little
for margins, plus 1/2" each side.  I have seen listing paper described
as 14x11, but it's actually about 14.5" x 11"; I've seen 11 x 15 1/16"
(in a catalogue); I don't remember ever seeing anything as wide as 15
7/8".

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York

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From: "Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat Apr 12 21:59:00 2003

> (in a catalogue); I don't remember ever seeing anything as wide as 15

The nominal size sold here is 14 7/8.   But I suppose that anywhere that
you go, there are some people who round off such things ("Give me 
some of that striped stuff that's a few feet wide").  Around here, the
box always says 14 7/8

You ARE right that that is INCLUDING the tearoffs - 13 7/8 without, 14 7/8
with.  I got sloppy with the fact that with narrow paper (8.5"), the
nominal size is without the tearoffs. (9.5" with the tearoffs)

BTW, there ARE papers available wider than 15".  But not at Chumpusa.  
You have to go to a place that handles large format computer forms.

For an example of the "multiple perf":
http://www.gotoforms.com/templates/frmTemplateM.asp?CatalogID=117&Zoom=Yes&SubFolderId=20

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun Apr 13 11:45:50 2003

Check on http://pucc.princeton.edu/

It's ground zero for IBM mainframe culture right now.  Other than the
IBM Fora.

Peace...  Sridhar

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From: Lee Courtney <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun Apr 13 11:46:01 2003

www.officedepot.com

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From: "McFadden, Mike" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Jul 14 12:31:00 2003

Sellam wrote:

>In the late 1970s, AT&T's Bell Labs invented the "electronic blackboard".
>It was basically a digitizing tablet that allowed one to draw and transmit
>images.

>Might anyone know where one exists?  How about similar products prior to
>December 1979?  When was the first digitizing tablet invented?

>This is research I'm conducting for a client, so any useful leads will be
>compensated.

>Thanks!

I know we had a graphics tablet at the Bioengineering Program at the University 
of Missouri in 1975.  It was a GrafPen Model (SP?).  It consisted of two arrays of 
microphones along the x and y axis of a plexiglas tablet.  

MMMMMMMMMMMM
M
M
M
M
M
M
M

There was a spark gap pen that generated a click and the microphones could locate the 
point on the tablet.  It could be flipped right or left handed because your hand/arm 
could block the sound from the microphones.  It had a digital readout of the x and y coordinates.  
There was also a serial interface which we connected to our PDP-11/20.  We placed the 
tablet over a illuminated light box with a chest radiograph on it and then we able to outline the
margins of the human heart on the film.  The data was used in a project to compute the 
shape of the heart and attempt to catagorize the type of congenital heart defect.

I used it to place boxes on the film to look at pulmonary vascularity.  

You could imput points in a point by point mode or constant input mode.  You could then 
scale the points to be displayed on a graphics display such as a RAMTEK system. We normally 
would draw and display on top of the digitized film image to make sure we were registered correctly.  
 
There were lots of work related and fun related stuff the Grad students used to system for.

There was a 3-dimensional model available later.

References found online:
Grafpen GP-7 sonic digitiser, manufactured by Science Accessory Corporation.
1968 - Science Accessories Corporation (later SAC) releases sonic digitizer. 
GSIZE/SIZE documentation <http://biochem.otago.ac.nz/resource/gsize_doc.html>
... SIZE has been written to work with a GP-7 Grafbar Sonic Digitizer, manufactured
by Science Accessories Corporation, 970 Kings Highway West, Southport ... 
biochem.otago.ac.nz/resource/gsize_doc.html - 33k - Cached <http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:xcKrL5E0pMAJ:biochem.otago.ac.nz/resource/gsize_doc.html+%22sonic+digitizer%22+%22science+accessories%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8> - Similar pages </search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=related:biochem.otago.ac.nz/resource/gsize_doc.html> 
Mike

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From: Fred Cisin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Jul 14 13:58:00 2003

> of Missouri in 1975.  It was a GrafPen Model (SP?).  It consisted of two arrays of

LOTS of digitizers existed back then.
Anyone familiar with anything prior to the Gerber Data Digitizer in 1970?
(about a meter square, horizontal and vertical crosshairs, output directly
into a 026 punch)
Anyone HAVE one? or something earlier?

The claim to have invented "electronic blackboard" has to be narrowed
SUBSTANTIALLY, as all that they did was enlarge existing digitizers to
produce one suitable for classroom/conference room wall.  It was an issue
of engineering, not invention.

What about an under $10 one for a MICROCOMPUTER/PERSONAL COMPUTER?
I will lay claim to the dubious honor of inventing that. (even though
it was so obvious that MANY people must have done so)
In 1983, I wanted a digitizer for blackboards.  As a "proof of
concept", I attached a one foot long piece of clear plastic (a
ruler) to the shaft of a potentiometer.  At the other end of it
I attached another potentiometer, with another foot long piece
of clear plastic attached to the shaft of that one.  That made
for an upper arm hinged at the edge of the board with a
potentiometer, and a forearm hinged at the end of that with a
potentiometer at the "elbow".

I connected the potentiometers and a "fire" button to a DA15,
and plugged that into the joystick board ("Analog Input Board")
of a PC.  (actually, for a while, I had a DIN connector on it
for Coco).

I could read the resistance of the two pots to know the "shoulder"
and "elbow" angles, and with some trivial trigonometry in software,
knew the location of the "hand".  (You know the angle of the shoulder,
the length of the upper arm, the angle of the elbow, and the length of
the forearm)  At the hand end, I had a hole, so that it could be
used for digitizing existing materials, by lining up the hole and
pressing the fire button, or with a pen through the hole and
"sampling" in a loop, it could do a horrendously bad job of
digitizing handwriting.

I intended to redo it with yardsticks for blackboards (with a
chalk sized hole in the hand), but the mechanical issues of a
yardstick flopping around on the end of another yardstick were
a bit much.  And a usable one would require better resolution
of the analog to digital circuitry than I could get out of the
6 bits per pot using the IBM joystick board.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		[email-masked]

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From: Peter Turnbull <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Jul 14 19:07:01 2003

> potentiometer at the "elbow".

There was a very similar device around in the early 1980s; I can't
remember what it was called but it hooked up to one of the machines at
the college I worked in then, so it must have been for a BBC Micro
(around 1983) or an Apple ][ or PET (about 1982).  Its operational area
was about an A4 sheet.

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York

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From: jpdavis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Jul 15 06:24:00 2003

>(around 1983) or an Apple ][ or PET (about 1982).  Its operational area
Anybody else try depositing carbon ( either pencil lead or other 
substances )
on a flat surface and work out the math to get X-Y?
Jim Davis.

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From: "John Allain" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Jul 15 08:52:00 2003

> Anybody else try depositing carbon ( either pencil 
> lead or other substances )

More like everybody.
The math is not hard at all.  With two sample points, you read 
two voltages, from that mathematically get two circle radii, intersect
them and get at most two points.  Sample three points and get just
the one point with a degree of redundancy to it.  I would take the samples
by chopping back and forth from the different sampling points.
Others may have other methods, I don't claim to know them all.

Try finding a premanufactured carbon surface, or antistatic plastic
that is partially conductive.  Trouble with carbon contact is that once
you put paper on top of it you've insulated it, so it is to be used as
mouse substitute only.  An electromagmetic digitizer can take a 
paper above it just fine.

John A.

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From: [email-masked] (Tony Duell)
Date: Tue Jul 15 16:03:00 2003

> (around 1983) or an Apple ][ or PET (about 1982).  Its operational area

One of the projects in the first Fischer Technik Robotics kit was a 
digitiser like that. The kit contained 2 motors, an electromagnet, 3 
lamps, 8 switches, 2 potentiometers and various mechanical bits. You used 
the 2 pots in a double-jointed arm (as above) to cover an area about the 
size of an A4 sheet.

Other projects included : 

A plotter (of a strange design, in that it worked in polar coordinates,
ther was an arm that could be rotated by one of the motors (using a pot
for feedback) and the pen carriage ran along said arm (using the other
motor and pot)

2 simple robot arms, one of which was designed to play the Tower of 
Hanoi. This was the thing I demonstrated at the 1997 HPCC conference.

The kit dod not include any form of computer interface. I think you could 
buy them for the IBM PC, Apple ][, etc. But not for the TRS-80s (which 
were the machins I had at the time). I built my own, initially for the 
Model 1, and then later for the HP48 calculator....

-tony