| Mus.Cat. NEWUC:2003.28 | Mnfctr: IBM | Date: 1965 | Ser. No: - | Model: - |
| Comp: print shuttle | Length: 835 mm | Depth: 54 mm | Height: 15 mm | Weight: 130 g |
This is a print shuttle and its storage container.
This one is incomplete, it only has 7 of its 16 print segments.
At the left hand end is an aluminium shutter that passed light beams and light detectors providing shuttle position information.
Under that is a row of metal teeth that engaged with a toothed wheel to move the shuttle.
To the right was the print segments :-
The print segments had 13 metal fingers with type elements on the end.
They were clipped into slots on the hollow aluminium tube by spring steel clips.
The print speed was only 120 lines per minute (2 per second),
but the print quality was good.
The printer's fatal weekness, apart from its slow speed, was that as the inked ribbon became worn from overuse,
it frayed, and snagged the print segments, ripping them out of their slots and into the path of other print segments and
the hammer bank.
Hence the state of all we have left of a shuttle printer.
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