Good luck, Jim!
The Cage Printer
- Thread starter Disposable_Ensign
- Start date
And an actual line printer of that era, like an IBM 1401 would print 600-1400 lines per minute (which, if we assume 60 lines per page, is faster than a typical desktop laser printer, and orders of magnitude faster than such so-called line printers as an Epson LQ1500). (But look at the size of the thing!)
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They had clipboards. The printouts went into the one carried by the OOD.
Then they went into the trash on the lower decks.
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Hahaha. I'm pretty sure the guy you see behind the printer is my friend Mike Albaugh, formerly of Atari, who volunteers at that museum.
"Cut the chatter, Red Two. Accelerate to attack speed."
Exactly.Boy you guys spend a lot of text debating what is obvious: no one watching 1966 TV was going to be wowed by a printed piece of paper coming out of a slot.
It was 55 years ago, not 155 years ago.
Wait til you find out how the doors worked
Which I guess is interesting in itself: back then, it would have been somewhat surprising that the doors were operated by something with half a brain (and it took a bit of skill to hide the fact).
Today, this certainly shouldn't surprise anybody, yet arguments about "too smart" doors that "read the script" persist...
Timo Saloniemi
Today, this certainly shouldn't surprise anybody, yet arguments about "too smart" doors that "read the script" persist...
Timo Saloniemi
I had to operate a printer like that, and it wasn't the Sixties, either. It was the 1990s and 2000s. Because of the way we had to feed different continuous forms into it from boxes on the floor, I couldn't close the silence hood. And it was deafening. There's a little sign on the machine to wear hearing protection, with a drawing of head wearing earmuffs. We didn't have those, and I spent a lot of time plugging my ears.
Yeah the automatic doors and TOS were operated by a mind-reading AI.
^^^
I say that because there were instances where the door responded based on the emotional state of the character.
In TOS S1 "The Naked Time" you have the scene where Spock is starting to lose his emotional control, and he ducks into a conference room to regain control of his emotions. However, right after entering the room, he never moves away from the doors after they close; and even leans into them. So yeah those automatic door sensors must have been reading his mind.
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Or reading his movements. You could use gait analysis to determine someone's intent, whether they're moving toward the door with purpose or just walking past it, so as to keep the doors from sliding open when you didn't want them to. So just standing there and leaning back against the doors wouldn't register.
Or maybe Spock just didn't come far enough into the room for the sensors on that side to notice him. I've had that happen with real sliding doors, which can close on you if you're too slow to move past them.
Obviously, but it's fun to be creative and make the effort if one wants to. I used to think the "Naked Time" door thing was just a silly mistake, but then I realized it kind of made sense, given real-life experience with door sensors. It's cool when something you thought was just a mistake turns out to accidentally make sense after all.
I agree that door sensors could be more sophisticated than we used to think possible.
Another case of this is the communicators. In "This Side of Paradise" if I recall, Kirk is talking to the Enterprise, and then he just says "Kirk to Spock" — and Spock's communicator beeps. That seemed absolutely impossible, especially in the early 1970s, when it didn't even occur to me that a handheld communicator could also be such a powerful computer, because that was absurd. But now we have that, and it's called voice dialing. It's a matter of fact thing now.
Batman was another great pioneer of artificial intelligence. The Batmobile could not only be remote controlled, it was also a self-driving car in one episode, and it screeched to a stop at a crosswalk to keep from hitting some ducks. Completely autonomous.
Another case of this is the communicators. In "This Side of Paradise" if I recall, Kirk is talking to the Enterprise, and then he just says "Kirk to Spock" — and Spock's communicator beeps. That seemed absolutely impossible, especially in the early 1970s, when it didn't even occur to me that a handheld communicator could also be such a powerful computer, because that was absurd. But now we have that, and it's called voice dialing. It's a matter of fact thing now.
Batman was another great pioneer of artificial intelligence. The Batmobile could not only be remote controlled, it was also a self-driving car in one episode, and it screeched to a stop at a crosswalk to keep from hitting some ducks. Completely autonomous.
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I always interpreted Picard's line "... printout all stations and all decks" as text on the station monitors and consoles rather than a physical printout.
Well, mind-reading is trivially easy today. If you're headed for the fridge, the sensor should have no difficulty telling you're hungry - or even predicting your next path via the toilet back to the sofa. Sensors today can do that in a crowd, identifying folks from brief glimpses of their faces first. But that's way above the pay rate of a Star Trek door, which simply opens when it sees people moving with intent.
Only in the sense that the emotional state made the character move in a certain way, though.
In TOS S1 "The Naked Time" you have the scene where Spock is starting to lose his emotional control, and he ducks into a conference room to regain control of his emotions. However, right after entering the room, he never moves away from the doors after they close; and even leans into them. So yeah those automatic door sensors must have been reading his mind.
So you think a basic motion-orientation sensor instead should think Spock wants the door to open when he's not moving and is facing away from it? I do think the door is smarter than ya!
As said, 1980s doors could easily have done that and better; the 1990s is just when it got trivially cheap and the 2000s when it became off-the-shelf. Yet we don't have it - because there just isn't a market for truly automated doors, and never was (people hate automation as a rule, and the few gimmick-oriented people don't carry a market).
Timo Saloniemi
Yes, exactly. Picard had said earlier, "From this point, no station aboard, repeat no station, for any reason will make use of transmitted signals or intercom. We'll try and take them by surprise." The presumption was that text-messaging all stations through the hardwired connections of the computer system would be less likely to be intercepted than audio signaling through the intercom -- though that seems quaint in retrospect, a relic of a time when computer hacking was a less familiar phenomenon. (Besides, wouldn't the intercom be hardwired too? It's not like they could pick up sound through space.)
Plus, as it turned out, the Q were nigh-omnipotent, so it wouldn't have made a difference anyway...
It's a weird and contradictory interpretation, really. Picard already ruled out all types of "transmitted signals" and "intercom". He's now saying " Using printout only, notify all decks to prepare for maximum acceleration". How does that not suggest, nay, establish what it says on the tin? That is, using printout (and then runners) as the medium of notification? This would eliminate the elint type of outside intercept nicely enough, assuming the originating printer itself were secure, and thus would meet the plot needs exactly.
If Picard wanted text-messaging, he'd say text-messaging. Sheesh...
Timo Saloniemi
If Picard wanted text-messaging, he'd say text-messaging. Sheesh...
Timo Saloniemi
Yeah, so omnipotent they actually had to chase the Enterprise.
srsly, the Q had to be laughing their asses off in that episode. "These primitive humans think they can outrun us? Let's play with them awhile."
It always made me laugh that in the same episode they had Spock controlling the computer via gestures, a là Minority Report, and the computer PRINTING a readout.
Printers...how quaint.
