KBK update for Monday, 26th July

Lots of rummaging around on the Internet Archive in the last few days has turned up a number of interesting finds:

• Oak Series 475 is older than expected, having been found advertised as far back as 1973, only a few years after Oak Series 400 is likely to have been introduced
• The first known advertisement for Micro Switch SD Series with a verifiable date, being printed in June 1974; the advertisement does not state the readiness of SD Series however
• Licon Series 555 was advertised briefly in Computerworld in December 1972, months before any of the patents for it were filed; discovered examples are not presently known from before 1975, as early ITW keyboards are rare to the point of nonexistent
• Maxi-Switch 3100 Series is now conclusively identified via a 1972 advertisment in Electronic Design, where it is clearly depicted; this and a clearer advertisement also in Electronic Design show the whole of Maxi-Switch’s 2700 Series photograph, which can be seen to precisely match the Amphenol/Bunker-Ramo patent
• An advertisement in Electronics Australia from January 1973 depicts Mechanical Enterprises SS-10 and SS-11 switches from their Mercutronic family; these are the switches from the “intermediate” mercury contact patent that were still awaiting discovery of their identity
• An advertisement the Electronic Engineer from September 1971 for General Instrument’s AY-5-2376 single-chip keyboard encoder gives us a new low water mark for the introduction of off-the-shelf scanning encoders

View within the updates for 2021

Comments

None yet.