IBM's last tabulator last unitrecord punch card machine 477

This has been noted in other sources as well. Of course, I suspect that other factors contributed to some of the popularity of the IBM 1401, but the 1403 printer definitely allowed it to offer value.

The principle of a chain printer, as opposed to a drum printer, or even a band printer, would (theoretically) allow for a design in which alternate overlapping hammers behind the print train - having a design like

=-=-=-=-

think of the - as being in the exact middle of the = if the font doesn't show it that way

could allow letters to be placed at *arbitrary* horizontal locations on the page.

Exactly what would *that* be good for? (In real life, of course, characters often printed in slightly the wrong place horizontally - just as they did so vertically on drum printers, with even less attractive results.)

The 1403 had a 240-character print train, which was preserved on some later models as well. For maximum speed, it could contain five runs of 48 characters. At the University where I studied, there were basically two choices for much of the time when I was there; a 60-character print train (0-8-2 had no graphic, so they only had to omit two characters in the basic IBM 29 character set, the cent sign and the exclamation mark) called the PN print train, with a squarish font, and a 120-character print train, the TN print train, which included lower-case letters, superscript numbers, graphics for drawing boxes, and the old lozenge from the 1401. The font there was similar to Courier, but the numbers were different for greater legibility.

I've heard that there was also an 80-character style of print train, to allow faster lower-case printing, I suppose, with three runs instead of two.

Anyways, if one allowed characters to print at locations other than single-character columns, say by dividing each 1-10" column into four parts of 1-40", then one could have characters that were 2, 3, 4, or 5 parts *wide*.

Proportional spacing - on a line printer. IBM even had a ready-made brand name for such a printer; they could have called it the 1403 Executive.

But the laser printer came along before the idea occurred to anyone.

John Savard