Artifact Details

Title

Stylus driver

Catalog Number

102730213

Type

Physical object

Description

This module consists of transistors, resistors, capacitors and diodes. It was part of the "Radiation Printer" used at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the 1970s. Radiation, Inc. modified a real (Hamilton) printing press and added the needed electronics and controls to produce a printer that ran at seven pages per second , extremely fast for the era. This module varied the voltage to the print head.
Accompanying this module is a note which reads: " Voltage applied to the stylus in the "Radiation Printer" had to be high enough to produce an arc from a selected stylus to a ground plane, passing through the printer paper where it burned a tiny hole in the white coating thereby revealing the black undercoating of the paper. A character was formed from selected dots in 7 rows of 5 dots with 3 additional dots for spacing between each character. There were 132 characters placed in a line and counting a suitable space between characters, there were 1,024 styli in the print head. The create of printing was a nominal 62,500 characters per second; up to 132 characters per line and up to 66 such lines per page could be printed. The paper was moved past the row of styli at the rate of 7 pages per second, so it is easy to see that the styli could get very busy. A full description of the operation of the Radiation Printer can be found elsewhere within the Museum."

Manufacturer

Radiation, Inc.

Place Manufactured

Melbourne, Fla.

Identifying Numbers

Other number LEA69.3113.21 Printed in white on left edge of component side; also on right edge on circuit side

Dimensions

overall: 1/2 in x 3 in x 5 1/4 in

Category

I/O/other

Credit

Gift of George Michael

Lot Number

X3863.2007