I love '50s tech names; "Reservisor", "device-o-tron", "thing-o-matic"

Fran wrote below the video: "Why can't displays be this cool today?" - And I totally agree.

This was a really nice explanation. Clear camera work and demo, and interesting history. Enjoyed a lot.

Since you mentioned escapements, it occurs to me that a half dozen of these displays, properly configured, could make a really cool clicky clock.

I do wonder who designed the typefaces for all these cool displays that Fran digs up for us.

This is what you do best Fran. Eloquent and interesting as always. Keep up the great work. Thank you.

These displays are very similar in operation to score reels on early electromechanical pinball machines from around the same era. I'd suggest checking out Joes Classic Video Games channel... they have several (dozen) repair videos on electromechanical pinball machines (and later stuff too) where he goes into detail of their operation including displays, bonus counters and other cool stuff. EM pinball machines have an artistry to them that modern electronics just aren't capable of

Imagine how it must have sounded to have an entire wall of these firing constantly.

Forget about the mechanics, that font is absolutely amazing.

These would make an interesting electro-mechanical clock I think.

12:38 - cool Texas Tnstruments vintage calculator.

The two oval openings on the top are the sockets where the 'lock' popped in when you slid it into the rack. You needed to release the lock manually (which required a special tool) in order to extract it from the rack.

I love it when you casually whip out the Texas Instruments to do a little arithmetic. I had one of those TI calculators in the late '70s. Upgraded to an HP 10C programmable calculator in 1982, for university.

Can you imagine how it would be working in a stock office where you had hundreds of these things CLACK CLACK CLACKING away all day?

Those would be super cool if they had radium luminescent painted displays

My father worked for Teleregister in the 1950's through 1970's. He was a repairman for the "Big Board" at the NYSE and used to bring broken parts home for me and my brother to play with. We made up all kinds of stuff with these devices. So fun to see this video! Thanks.

love the font. interesting explanation of a clever mechanism

That new intro never gets old-it’s absolutely perfect. A wall full of these teleregister displays must’ve been quite loud with all the mechanical clattering. We snicker at pulse phone systems now, but it allows the elegant simplicity of being able to accomplish so much with only 2 or 3 contacts. It would be interesting to see the controller that produced the pulses to operate these displays, but I’m sure it was enormous and is long gone. The vertical axis of the barrel forces the display space to be really narrow compared to the overall width of the unit. Kind of interesting to compare to horizontal axis barrels like odometers. It also makes me appreciate why Heathrow’s iconic flip displays are made the way they are-the two pieces allow a greater area of each unit to be used for characters.

An ingenious and surprisingly complex display. I'm enjoying this series of old switches, lamps and displays.

Hi Fran Bill B here and I worked for Teleregister starting in 1959 to 1988. The indicator that you have there was part of the Stock Boards that Teleregister provided stock quotation from 1930 till 1968. Your explanation of how it operated is basically correct. Everytime a price was updated the indicators in that field would first be cleared to blank and then pulsed to the desired number. Clearing the indicators to blank provided a way of knowing where the indicator was. One area that you were amiss is the operating voltage. It was 48 to 54 volts. The pulse rate was about 20PPS and the duty cycle was 50% The clearing pulses always numbered 10 and it insured the indicator would be at the blank location. Then the lower contact would be grounded and anywhere from 0 to 10 pulses would spin the indicator to the desired number.

I can only imagine the awesome sound a board would've made when reset all to blanks and the clunking noise all day during use

So imagine a room with massive Teleregister displays busily working. I want to hear that sound! Thanks Fran.

That TI-30 brings back some memories!

I love these electromechanical devices and they throw me back to a time in history to when things like this were magical. I can only imagine the sound of a wall of these things doing a zero reset.

Great series. Really interesting to see the evolution of these displays. Hope that there are more to come!

More cool display stuff! The first thing this reminded me of was a synchronous clock system. (Master clocks like schools and airports.) The Simplex system used a setup kinda like that so at the 59th minute, it would open the input lead and no advance until a pulse went thru the other contact, setting it to 00 and reconnecting the input again. So a few extra pulses would insure all clocks started correctly. And, as others noted, very like a pinball score reel. For resetting the reels to 00000 at the start the reset relay would route a bunch of fast pulses from the score motor thru a contact on the reel that would drop out at 0. Love that "chunk, chunk, chunk" sound as several reels reset. (My pin has four banks of 4 reels each, so can be a bit noisy!) Love EM pins. A lot more work to maintain than electronic pins, but often more responsive and tune-able. And very satisfying to get back to full speed and function! Mechanical logic is fun... Stu

Hi Fran. Greatly enjoy your channel, particularly those featuring vintage display tech. In UK some rail control centres of the late 1950s to early 70s used very similar rotary displays made by Sodeco to store and display four-character train IDs. These tracked around schematic representations of the network by applying a train of ten pulses for each character when a train passed a trackside signal out in the field. The pulses would first rotate the source display round to a home position then be switched to the destination display for the remainder to count up to the previously stored value. All based on telephone exchange type equipment, off-stage storage of an ID used rotary selectors and the operators entered IDs using old-fashioned rotary telephone dials. A very simple system conceptually, but the displays were maintenance-intensive and were all changed out for various alternative displays over the years before the old control panels were themselves superseded fully by computer screen-based technology. When I was a trainee back in the early 80s, there were still a few of these displays around but they were gone very soon after that. Swindon Panel Society have such an old control panel at the Didcot Railway Centre museum with an operations simulator under the hood. For the train number display, the panel is currently still equipped with the display screens that were there at decommissioning in 2015, but there's a project to restore these mechanical oddities on part of it, along with some of the other displays used over its history. Here's a video of one of the displays in action. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/itl2krei18XPomg.html

Yes. Fans of the TV series Mission: Impossible (1966 to 1973) have seen these digital displays - and other similar ones in many scenes. Thanks for sharing the info on these neat early digital displays.

I guess that the isolation at the blank Display part could be used for leading zero removal too. Excellent piece of kit and video.

Fran, thank you for showing these kind of awesome displays, and with so much info. it's really nice to learn about these things!

I am old enough to have been alive in 1959 when these were built. If you could use your amazing talents to make an electronic machine to transport me back to that era I would be very grateful Fran. Getting bit fed up with so called life today !

Your videos are the only ones I continue to watch during the credits. The song is so catchy and charming

Very interesting. Coming from a digital hardware design background, it is refreshing and I enjoy the vintage “analogish”’ equipment experimental videos. Nice job. Thanks.

All of your videos need to be saved and stored, they are pure gold. Please keep making them I learn more from some of your casual comments than I have from hours of study. You are an incredible teacher.

Thank you for this interesting content.

Cool stuff Fran, I love seeing how this old things work

I truly appreciate your incredible knowledge!

sweeeet. that was way more simple than i was initially thinking. good design. thank you fran!

The patent drawings show some really cool designs. US2737650A Including the copper dial plates. EDIT found the rack in which these slide, it's at edit 6. EDIT 9 Found the actual patent drawing for the unit in the video US1979028A. The ratchet mechanism dates back to 1932!!! Whoa. This baby is even older than the 50's. Edit 2: US2617870A is also interesting. Edit 3: whoa, check this one out. US3245074A yeah, i fell down the hole. Edit 4: another variant US2737650A Edit 5: On the original patent, one of his partners (if that's what you call them) had this one US1890878A Edit 6: JACKPOT found the rack in which the dial is set, check this baby out. US2117661A

Fran - you always do cool stuff, but this series on old display technology is absolutely outstanding! Thank you!

12:40 a vintage TI-30 calculator! I have one of those. It was a gift from one of my aunts when I was a teen back in the '80s. The manual was bigger than the calculator! I have since moved to Texas and live within half-an-hour of Texas Instruments

Those numbers are in a beautiful font. Awesome display!! They look luminescent though, thinking about the video you made last time about not so healthy clockfaces and -hands. But i wouldn't let that stand in the way..

Clever little unit... Always enjoy seeing how carries are implemented on older devices like these!

Omg memories of my childhood - that TI-30!

Fran, I worked as an engineer for the Teleregister Corporation AKA Bunker Ramo Corp in Stamford CT. In the nid 60s. Be happy to answer any questions you may have. Also, I like to comment that the numerical indicator you have was also used by the New Haven railroad, banking industry and a small installation in Denver Colorado for the United Airlines system.

Your calculator brings back memories of when I had one .

Ha ha this intro is exactly what I wanted to see. SUCH a GREAT video opener!

Marvelous work Sherlock !...cheers.

Thanks, Fran. Beautifully analyzed and explained, as always. Imagine the sound of hundreds of these being updated with stock prices. Four would make a rather nifty clickety-clackety clock, driven via a microprocessor, of course. Why not mix the old and the new? Looking forward to whatever you dig up next!

So, when I'm investigating an unknown coil for a relay or solenoid, I use an adjustable current source. By gradually ramping up the current to the point where the device activates, you can simply measure the voltage that develops across the coil. I'm a tad weird in that I prefer current source driver circuits for coils and L.E.D. circuits.

Love the typeface used in the display. Spent a few minute looking for it, but didn't find anything right off the bat. Love the path these display videos have take you! Thanks Fran. :)

Interesting and educational as always. Keep up the great work!

Great find Fran

these videos are endlessly fascinating.

These things are just fascinating. The things they thought up to make the most of what they had at the time.

"Still Amazing! 1950's Teleregister" No, YOU'RE still amazing Fran!

My father worked for this company selling these to stock brokers in NYC. Awesome, thanks for this!

Grate job on this video!

II appreciate all of your videos! Thx from germany!

Hey, for me the calculator is vintage enough! I just about remember those. Great video.

So cool! Reminds me of the rotary step-by-step relays in the old phone systems I used to scavenge!

Thanks for sharing this Fran :)

Love this!! Thank you

Love the graphics, the style is timeless, I hope to see these stylish numbers come back in media such as tv

This is just the sort of thing my dad would see and try to build himself. Back in the sixties, he'd have coil forms, masonite, brass screws and spools of enameled magnet wire to make his own latching relays. It was fun to him.

Another frantastic video. Thanks a franillion.

Interesting video, Fran! (Also like the photo of the TWA Constellation model at 2:25!)

Very interesting...and cool! Thanks!

12:49 She's using a Texas instruments TI-30 calculator. I had that same exact calculator in High School 1976-77. Now that is old school....and way cool. Rock on Fran!

It's sort of stuff, how big is to run stock market information systems is absolutely amazing. Thanks for doing this one Fran

The first video of yours I watched was the one on the nimo tube and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Really cool. Thanks.

They had something similar to this in the bomb from Nanny McPhee Returns, the rotors had sharp edges though and may have been servo driven.

As others have pointed out, this works the same way EM pinball displays work. I suspect the upper leaf switch was the reset circuit that was senta series of 10 pulses that guaranteed the home blank position. Afterwards, numeric data was pulsed in through the lower leaf terminal. The case would have been the common ground. I also wonder if the working voltage was 6.3 volts, which was at that time very common as it was the same used for supplying tube filaments, and tube gear was still the prevalent technology of the time. In fact, the solenoid may well be designed for ac power, which had an added benefit of not causing the large emi kickback when the magnetic field collapsed - EM pinballs used AC solenoids for that same reason. Still very interesting - I have not seen that specific display before. Love it!

Keep doing more of this Fran

This is very similar to an electromagnetic pinball score reel. You might enjoy having a look at one of those sometime! Or better yet a whole EM pinball.

👍👍 Thanks Fran!

Amazing how the were able to cram the numbers so close.

i love your vids ! gotta go to sleep now because in poland its 1am gonna watch the video tomorrow !

The figures are very close each other to cover the eleven slots available on the drum's circumference as most efficiently as posiible and are tall and narrow. The result was a very ellegant typography in my modest opinion. I'm sure that the designer of those symbols kept in mind to make em visually pleasent.

So enjoy these vids 😍

Love the FranLab logo on your shirt!

Fun to see the TI calculator. I spent 50 hours wadges to buy a 6 function TI for my physics class in 1974.

I’m diggin’ the 40+ year old TI-30 calculator. I had one just like it in high school in my physics class in ‘76-‘77. I think it cost about $30 which was a good some of money back then. Brings back some great memories.

Thanks for sharing. 😉👌🏼

Fran you rock!

Hi Fran. I bet you never suffered one moment of boredom ever in your life. LOL. awesome bits of info.

Reminds me of the old airport schedule boards. Very cool.

About the same vintage, in telephone exchanges there were devices known as "uniselectors" that work in much the same way, except that instead of having a display, they moved wiper contacts to select output contacts. There may be one set of contacts in to 20 or so sets of contacts out. The reason I mention it is that they were wired so that when a call cleared, they would reset to the start position (equivalent to the b lank on those displays), which was all done by contacts on the uniselector. I'm wondering if there is a use of those two contacts relative to earth that does the same thing. When you showed it working, the pulse on the upper contact advanced the display, I'm wondering if connecting power from the case to the lower contact causes it to do an auto-reset? It may not, it's just a hunch.

I recall seeing a smaller Alpha-Numeric display on a B-52 bomber in an old Cold War film. It was used for receiving coded messages from command. I remember it making that click clack noise as the letters and numbers registered on it.

At 2:44 it seems that both Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were working with these.

Nice forensic analysis of technology that drove the financial and the airline industry in my childhood.

I like the TI calculator right out of the 1970s

Back when the Pennsylvania Railroad ran Suburban Station in Philly, the status of arriving and departing trains was shown on a lovely board near the ticket booths with times shown with mechanical digits like these. I think the ticketing system was Teleregister as well. "As high*speed digital computers, magnetic storage units and other electronic components were perfected, the company advanced rapidly in the field of special purpose electronic engineering. TELEREGISTER was the first (working with engineers of a leading airline) to design and install a successful magnetic drum system for commercial use. This pioneer system, TELEREGBTER'S Magnetronic Reservisor, has since been adapted as the first electronic reservations control system for use on America's railroads." s3data.computerhistory.org/brochures/teleregister.specialpurposesystems.1956.102646324.pdf

Do you have an electro-mechanical pinball machine reel in your collection? This is similar, in a way.

I remember these.. bought them surplus a very long time ago.

November 17 1958 I was 8 days old ! The display is wearing better than me.

You totally get points for using that vintage calculator

Great choice of device.

awesome reed switches. Throwing sparks is a great thing.