Anyone know anything about old TEC Terminals?

[CRC]

On Thu, 31 May 2007 14:56:37 -0700, "Rick Bensene"  
<rickb at bensene.com> wrote:

> I have an old glass TTY-type terminal made by a company called TEC.

[...]
> but figured I'd ask here first to see if anyone has
> any information on the company or their terminals.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Rick Bensene
> The Old Calculator Web Museum
> http://oldcalculatorm

TEC was a Tucson, AZ based company that IIRC started out producing  
the logic-controlled, neon indicator lights that populated the fronts  
of IBM 360s and the like. Seeing the writing on the wall they  
branched into terminals and keyboards. The first terminals were upper  
case only. I was at the UofAZ computer center in the mid '70s  
visiting friends when one of TEC's folks brought in a new prototype  
upper/lower case terminals that we immediately hooked up to the local  
DEC10. We soon discovered that they used lower case for control  
codes... They really never got thing right.

In the late 70's they spent a pile developing a mini which I, along  
with a group from the UofA were invited to evaluate. Seems that they  
invented the PDP8 right after the Nova 1200 and PDP11 had been  
released with a selling price higher than either of the competition.  
The indicator business died and they went under in the early '80s  
IIRC. Their legacy was a Superfund cleanup site...

	CRC