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(Solved) What purpose does this enigmatic text serve? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/whatisthisthing@lemmy.world
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This container currently holds sewing pins. The text that wraps around: P2HEWARQI60P3HL51EHCBDRA01PKFGNBYCXDWA5SJ4

the text has no clear beginning or ending.

Here is the bottom:

The container is 5.5cm in diameter.

A small, round metal tin. The lid is blue with the title "MAINLINE ribbon" and a company monogram of "B". The body is beige with blue text wrapped around the container.
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[–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

That is a tin from a ribbon found on a teletype machine, a sort of automated typewriter that acted as the input/output terminal for old mainframe computers.

I have used these back in the 70s

I had a half baked, abandoned steampunk story I was writing that featured that ... it's weird to see someone talk about having used something two steps removed from a telegraph machine.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, my Jr. High had them as a pass down from the high school that had VDTs (video display terminals). By the time I got to HS we had PCS. Here is an interesting thing for your story, if you wanted to keep your programs you would have to list it out while the paper tape punch (thing on the left) was on. Then to run it again on a different day you would feed the tape back through and it would re-type your program in.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    thank you for that cool story. My story however, is long abandoned, but something fun to share is that the idea behind it was to have a steampunk chatroom through the use of typewriters hooked up to telegram cables to basically be teletype machines.

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