Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway
From: brian@ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Real Time Translations
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Date: 25 Sep 89 20:40:31 GMT
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X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 406, message 8 of 12

Because the old 5-level Baudot machines were notorious for mechanical
difficulties, there was an end-of-line sequence that became nearly
universal.  It was CR-CR-LF-LTRS-SPACE.  It got to the point where I
could practically type that as one fluid movement, and later I
programmed it into some communications software that had to talk to the
beasts.  The reasoning was:

Two CRs to make SURE that the carriage returned, since lots of the old
machines would simply pile up letters on the right margin if it missed
one - and that would mean that you'd miss a whole LINE of text.  Also,
if the carriage bar (the rod that the carriage slid on) had gotten dirty
or the oil had gotten gummy (as it did every few months), the carriage
would return very slowly which could lead to the next few characters
printing backwards across the page.

LF to advance the paper.  It would have been more dependable to send two
of these but we didn't want to waste paper.

LTRS to make sure the machine was back in letters mode, and also to give
the carriage just a little bit longer to get all the way to the left
side of the paper.

SPACE because the repair technicians didn't alway get the left travel
stop adjusted properly and the first two letters on the left often
piled up on top of each other, especially if the rubber bumper had
swollen with age - or absorbed oil.
	- Brian