What good is an HP plotter?

[Massimo Gnerucci]

(06-05-2018 12:22 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  Hello!

(06-05-2018 11:34 AM)Massimo Gnerucci Wrote:  Oh if I know that!
Wash and rinse, wash and rinse...

I briefly even did this for a living. In the very early 80ies I had a student job in a civil engineering firm (specialising in traffic planning/engineering). During the day we would assist in screening and entering data and during the night one of us students was tasked with plotting the results. Three or four plotters were connected to HP desktop calculators and one of them would constantly need attentention: Replacing paper, replacing pens, cleaning clogged/dried pens, restarting a hung computer or program, manually keeping track of the jobs completed and the ones left to do and so on. Sometimes this lasted until 7 in the morning when the first regular workers would claim their computer again for their day work and there wasn't even time to go home for a quick breakfast before lectures at university started at 8... Since then I like collecting that kind of stuff, but I will never ever again use a 1980ies calculator or plotter or printer to do real work. No way. Ever

Regards
Max

Hi Max!

I used Rapidographs mostly for personal sketches/high school classwork drawings.
I had quite a set of about 10 pens in different sizes; can't remember how many .1/.15 pens had to trash and replace due to dried ink. The thinnest ones had their inner wire bended so easily...

Regarding paleo-computing I, too, cut my teeth on night shifts, transferring newspapers articles from Apple ]['s 5.25" to 8" floppies. Wouldn't do it again nowadays...

Ciao (da un altro) Max