Silent 700
Encyclopedia
The Silent 700 was a line of portable computer terminal
s manufactured by Texas Instruments
in the 1970s and 1980s. Silent 700s printed with a dot-matrix heating element onto a roll of heat-sensitive paper. Some models were equipped with an integrated acoustic coupler
and modem that could receive data at 30 characters per second. Other models could be directly connected to computers at 300 baud
, and were sometimes used as the System console
where a hard copy record of the activities would be retained for a period of time.
As 1200-baud dialup communication became more common among Time-sharing
providers, the Silent 700 faced the problem that its printhead technology simply couldn't "heat up all the little dots" at 120 characters per second. TI solved this in their 780-series terminals by creating a two-character-wide thermal head, which printed 60 pairs of characters per second. This allowed the product line to survive a few more years in the new high-speed interactive computing environment of the mid-1980s.
Computer terminal
A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...
s manufactured by Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
in the 1970s and 1980s. Silent 700s printed with a dot-matrix heating element onto a roll of heat-sensitive paper. Some models were equipped with an integrated acoustic coupler
Acoustic coupler
In telecommunications, the term acoustic coupler has the following meanings:# An interface device for coupling electrical signals by acoustical means—usually into and out of a telephone instrument....
and modem that could receive data at 30 characters per second. Other models could be directly connected to computers at 300 baud
Baud
In telecommunications and electronics, baud is synonymous to symbols per second or pulses per second. It is the unit of symbol rate, also known as baud rate or modulation rate; the number of distinct symbol changes made to the transmission medium per second in a digitally modulated signal or a...
, and were sometimes used as the System console
System console
The system console, root console or simply console is the text entry and display device for system administration messages, particularly those from the BIOS or boot loader, the kernel, from the init system and from the system logger...
where a hard copy record of the activities would be retained for a period of time.
As 1200-baud dialup communication became more common among Time-sharing
Time-sharing
Time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking. Its introduction in the 1960s, and emergence as the prominent model of computing in the 1970s, represents a major technological shift in the history of computing.By allowing a large...
providers, the Silent 700 faced the problem that its printhead technology simply couldn't "heat up all the little dots" at 120 characters per second. TI solved this in their 780-series terminals by creating a two-character-wide thermal head, which printed 60 pairs of characters per second. This allowed the product line to survive a few more years in the new high-speed interactive computing environment of the mid-1980s.
External links
- Silent 700 electronic data terminals from Texas Instruments, June 1972 (pdfPortable Document FormatPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
) - Silent 700 Electronic Data Terminals, 1976(PDFPortable Document FormatPortable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
)