A Flexowriter Machine.

This machine was built in 1964 by FRIDEN Ltd.
Friden House, 101 Blackfriars Road, London, S.E.1.

It was a great improvement on earlier paper tape equipment,
in that it displayed by typing on a roll of paper what was being punched on the paper tape.
Also a punched paper tape could be loaded in the reader and a print of its contents produced.
In addition a paper tape could be copied, and by use of the control keys and keyboard,
a tape could be edited.

It was similar to an ordinary typewriter but it was electrically powered
so that only a light touch of the keys was required.
As the manual said:
Remember that the keys need only 1/8" depression and about 2 oz pressure.
Any additional force used is just wasted effort!
This was at a time when typewriters were mechanical devices and the keys had to be pressed
hard enough to move the print levers hard enough to hit the inked ribbon in front of the paper.

Flexowriter keyboard was similar to a typewriter keyboard.
But the two keys SHIFT and NORMAL, which moved the type-basket up and down,
differed from the shift key on a normal typewriter.

Pressing the SHIFT key locked the basket in the SHIFT position.
Pressing the NORMAL key removed it from the SHIFT position

In the NORMAL position you were able to type capital letters,
numerals and the more commonly used symbols.

In the SHIFT position you can type the lower case letters and the remaining symbols.

Paper tape reader and punch on the side of the Flexowriter.
While typing the Tape Punch can record your typing.

As the Friden Flexowriter Manual says:
Before creating a paper tape depress the RUN OUT key until about 9" - 12" of tape-feed
(blank tape with feed-hole only) are punched.
You can write on this portion of tape for identification.

These two codes must be present at the beginning of all KDF9 tapes.
It ensures that the Flexowriter starts in a definite basket position
with the carraige in the extreme left hand margin position.