4 HN users recommended this demo5 months2020–2025score 6
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN commenters love it as a vivid demonstration of terminal history, explaining why tools like ed and the tty echo model work the way they do.
CuriousMarc connects a restored 1930 Model 15 Teletype to a Linux machine and uses it as a terminal, after commenters requested it. The video shows the challenges of linking a 5-bit mechanical device to a modern OS.
“It's one of the best things on the Internet, IMO.” (HN, 2020)
Perhaps my favorite video on YouTube is this glorious footage of someone hooking a 1930s teletype up to a computer running Linux: [this video] Watching it for the first time is what finally made ed click for me. And yes, I was disappointed that the author clearly didn't understand why ed has the UI it does. It's about the teletype, not the computational cost of having a WYSIWIG UI.
Shows a 1930s teletype driving Linux, explaining why ed works as it does.
I've linked this before, but this video of hooking a 1930s teletype up to a Linux computer is what made ed click for me. [this video] It's one of the best things on the Internet, IMO.
Teletype on Linux makes the ed line editor make sense.
Saw this on YouTube last night; [this video] A facinating video that is part of a series going into the restoration of a 1930 Model 15 Teletype. In this video, they use it as a terminal for Linux.
Restored 1930 Model 15 Teletype used as a Linux terminal.
I can second CuriousMarc and Ben Eater for anyone interested in computer engineering. CuriousMarc has an amazing series on the Apollo Guidance Computer, as well as great one-off videos like running a linux terminal on a teletype ( [this video] ). Ben Eater does amazing videos on low level electronics, and has a great series on understanding how a computer really works.
CuriousMarc one-off showing a Linux terminal on a teletype.
To really understand how ed was useful, it's eye-opening to see exactly what life was like before video terminals. Essentially, think of using your laptop, but instead of looking at a monitor you're reading the output from a printer. So if you type `ls`, you see the directory listing being literally printed out on a dot-matrix printer. Naturally the only way of text editing is with a line EDitor, which lets you edit text one command at a time. When trying to use ed on a video terminal, it obviously looks wasteful. But that's because it was designed before video terminals were a thing. Kind of like using a modern day graphics card to play pong. here is a video illustrating using a teletype: [this video]
Illustrates using a teletype as a terminal, explaining ed's design.
A few recommendations from an avid armchair computer historian: - Dealers of Lightning is a wonderful book covering Xerox PARC's history and contributions. If you don't know what Xerox PARC is, then you should definitely read it. - Where Wizards Stay Up Late is a highly-readable, engaging book covering the history of the Internet's early development. - Soul of a New Machine gives a compelling glimpse into the era when physical machines and unique architectures were more dominant than software in shaping the market. - The Jargon File as maintained by Eric Raymond is not without controversy, but I think it's still fair to say a lot of computing folklore and cultural history is preserved there. [link] - Folklore.org is a wonderful, wistful collection of stories from the early days of Apple Computer, as told by some of the engineers and programmers who made it what it was in the 80s and early 90s. - The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace And Babbage is a wonderful graphic novel that's full of utterly ridiculous fiction that's only loosely inspired by the title characters. However, it is jam-packed with footnotes about the actual history from top to bottom, and in my opinion, there probably isn't a better or more fascinating glimpse of the proto-history of the computer anywhere. - Douglas Engelbart's Mother Of All Demos is well worth watching (can be found on YouTube), and maybe reading some commentary on. Mind-blowing what his team put together that we still haven't really matched
> The client sends l and then immediately receives an l sent back. I guess the idea here is that the client is really dumb – it doesn’t know that when I type an l, I want an l to be echoed back to the screen. It has to be told explicitly by the server process to display it. Of course the client may be really dumb! Here is a 1930s teletype used as a Linux terminal: [this video] If you would not do it that way, you would run into all kinds of synchronicity problems. How could you be sure that, after rapidly making 50 keystrokes, every keystroke was received by the other end, in that order?
A 1930s teletype as Linux terminal shows why echo is server-side.
It has been done: [this video] The old Teletype in question was a Baudot machine with a 60 mA current loop, rather than ASCII and 20 mA loop for the Model 33.
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