Teleprinter

From Wikipedia

A teleprinter is an electro-mechanical typewriter which can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point through a simple eletrical communications channel.

The teleprinter evolved through a series of inventions by a number of engineers, including Royal E. House, David Hughes, Charles Krum and Emile Baudot.

Teleprinters used the 5-bit Baudot code (also known as IA2) to represent their character set.

The Baudot code was used asychronously with start and stop bits: the asynchronous code design was intimately linked with the start-stop electro-mechanical design of teleprinters. (Early systems had used synchronous codes, but were hard to synchronise mechanically).

Some teleprinters used punched tape to record and replay messages. This was useful for situations in which access to the communication channel was at a premium.

Teleprinters were also used as the first interactive computer terminals.

External references:

http://www.peine.net/telex/

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