Computer History Museum

Color PLATO Terminal Prototype

Object is a metal box with wood side-panels, offering a keyboard in front. Above the keyboard are buttons labeled "CONSOLE" and "RESET". There are vent holes along the top rear and the rear panel. The rear panel offers a power switch, a female DB-9 connector and both male and female DB-25 connectors. The keyboard has a normal QERTY layout of brown keys and two groups of function keys colored gray. The central brown keys have lowercase letters on the key tops with colon/semicolon, comma, period, slash and ? keys in the usual locations. It differs from typical in that the apostrophe is shift-7, exclamation mark is in the bottom row over the period, and some of the shift-symbols in the top row are in unusual locations compared to current practice. From left to right the top row is (normal/shifted): 0/<, 1/>, 2/[, 3/], 4/$, 5/%, 6/_, 7/', 8/*, 9/(, =/). The gray function keys on the left are TAB/CR, Plus (+), Implication (<=), Minus, Divide (./.), Multiply (X). The gray keys on the right are: SUPER, SUB, ANS/TERM, COPY, ERASE, MICRO/FONT, HELP, Quad([]), NEXT, EDIT, BACK, LAB, DATA and STOP.

Color PLATO Terminal Prototype - Image 1
Color PLATO Terminal Prototype - Image 2

Item Details

Type
Physical Object
Catalogue number
102730838
Other identifying number
4059 (Other number)
4059 (Other number)
Organization
Control Data Corporation (CDC) (Manufacturer)
Category
CRT
Credit line
Gift of Bob Morris
Weight
15.5 (lb)
Dimension
16 1/2w x 5 1/4h x 19l (in)
41.91w x 13.34h x 48.26l (cm)
Acquisition number
X5649.2010