earliest graphics display system in your collection?

[William Donzelli]

> What's the oldest graphical display output device in your collection?

I have a early/mid 1950s Mk 5 Mod 5 Target Designator System, made for the
U S Navy. This device is a "normal" radar repeater (in laymans temrs -
scope with the circular sweeping trace), but has four independent cursors
under joystick control for designating targets for the gun crews.

Essentially, if you wanted to blast someone, you took your joystick
(assigned to one of the gun directors) and moved your cursor over the
victim. The cursor is a half circle with a dot. Push the button on the
joystick, and the signal is sent to the director and its computer. The
director responds by drawing another half circle (not dot, and the other
180 degree arc), and moves it so it joins your cursor. Whe you see your
half circle had turned into a full circle, the hot metal starts flying.

The Mk 5 supports four joysticks for four directors, so four targets could
be engaged independently using a time shared system. It consists of the
repeater with the joysticks, a video generator cabinet with a zillion
tubes, and a coordinate convertor cabinet with more tubes and lots of
synchros and mechanical bits to do all the polar to XY conversion.

William Donzelli
aw288 at osfn.org