page_title: TV Typewriter
section_title: Keyboards
hierarchical_section_title: TV Typewriter / Keyboards
caption_attribution_description: This keyboard was designed by Don Lancaster and was published in the April 1974 issue of Popular Electronics. The price was just $39 and the kit was very popular. Southwest Technical Products sold the keyboard (with revisions) for several years. Photo by Michael Holley, April 2005. Taken with a Nikon E3200 camera under tungsten lighting.
context_page_description: The TV Typewriter was a video terminal that could display two pages of 16 lines of 32 upper case characters on a standard television set. The design, by Don Lancaster, appeared on the cover of Radio-Electronics magazine in September 1973.
  The magazine included a 6-page description of the design but readers could send off for a 16-page package of construction details. Radio-Electronics sold thousands of copies for $2.00 each. The TV Typewriter is considered a milestone in the home computer revolution along with the Mark-8 and Altair 8800 computers.
  Sometimes the term was used generically for any interactive computer display on a screen; until CRT displays were developed, the teleprinter was the standard output medium.
context_section_description: Today keyboards are readily available and inexpensive, and they have a standard interface. In 1973, new keyboards were only available to computer and terminal manufacturers. Surplus keyboards were available to hobbyists but they often produced codes other than ASCII, such as baudot or EBCDIC. The TV Typewriter project and kit did not include a keyboard. The unit on the September cover shows a keyboard project Don Lancaster did in the February 1973 issue. This project involved hand crafting 55 key-switches including fabricating the springs for each key-switch. Most hobbyists chose to use a surplus keyboard and modified it to produce ASCII codes. Don Lancaster's prototype TV Typewriter which is now on display at the Computer History Museum has a surplus keyboard with an ASCII encoder circuit that was published in the February 1974 issue of Radio-Electronics. The plans for this encoder were also included in the TV Typewriter booklet
  Popular Electronics (April 1974) featured a complete keyboard kit designed by Don Lancaster and available from Southwest Technical Products for $39.50. The first version used simple RTL ICs to decode the key matrix. The design was soon improved to use a full featured keyboard encoder IC.
caption: Don Lancaster's $40 Keyboard kit produced by SWTPC.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "NIKON", "Image Model": "E3200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 9.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2012:01:27 12:35:52", "Image Artist": "Michael Holley", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "272", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1034", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5223", "EXIF ExposureTime": "10/239", "EXIF FNumber": "3", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "50", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2005:04:02 20:23:41", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2005:04:02 20:23:41", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Tungsten (incandescent light)", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "33/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1856", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1480", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "908", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "43", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}