"First time someone typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on the screen right in front of them" was long before 1973. The Mother of All Demos happened in 1968 and apparently Engelbart didn't see word processing as remarkable enough to comment on, since he was already demoing much more impressive things like networking, the mouse and hypertext.

Sorry about the background music!! This video was a bit of a learning experience.. it was only the fourth one I'd ever made, and the first where I was doing a 45 minute documentary with animations and such. I was still learning sound levels. The newest videos I think are finally dialing that in. But this is still my favorite.. Don Lancaster is a personal hero of mine and I felt the TVT deserved to be highlighted in its own right. I tried to do it justice. Thanks to everyone who gave this one a watch!

In 1976 I was in high school electronics lab and my teacher said go to the tv studio they have a problem with the prompter for the in school tv channel. In the control room was a tv typewriter that was not working. I spent 2 months tinkering with it reading the manuals (Don's articles) to learn how it worked. I ended up getting it kind of working but is was very touchy. It also had a sync lock board so it could overlay on video. In the end I read almost every book Don would write. And would learn enough from his books to go on to design a 6502 homebrew system in 1977. I Fondly remember it as my first true intro into the digital world. It was much different then with no internet but we felt we were at the start of a new age... little did we know what was to come

In 1981 I interfaced a TVT (some later model in a single large board) to a homebrew 6800 computer that acted as a terminal for the University of São Paulo's Burroughs B6900 computer. This was in turn connected to two very large black and white TV sets that were placed in strategic places. Previously students and professors stood in a physical line to use the computer and personally fed their cards into the reader and then grabbed their listing from the printer as that came out. This was replaced by rooms full of terminals and the line became virtual. The huge characters of the TVT were perfect for letting a person standing at the back of a crowd know when it was their time to pick up their listing.

Don Lancaster's books had a whole lot to do with the development of my career.

Don Lancaster, one of the legends, I remember from the early 80's. Forrest Mims. Jim Butterfield, Steve Wozniak... I knew Jim Butterfield (in Toronto; RIP) personally.

I did avidly read Don Lancaster's TV typewriter books, and used the information to create a TV display device for an early single board computer, which was the "junior computer", a clone of sorts of the KIM-1 single board 6502 based development board designed by the Dutch electronics magazine "elektuur" (now Elektor" ). It used the idea of using the CPU (the 6502) to do most of the work, just like the Sinclair ZX-80. Even though the PCB manufacturer produced my prototype PCB in mirror image, I forgot to tell them which side was the solder side and which side the component side, a rookies mistake :-) , I still managed to get it to work by folding over the legs of the various TTL DIP IC's over so the IC's were mounted "dead bug" style. and soldering the euro-connector interface to the junior computer on the back of the PCB. I had devised my own character-set inspired by the OHIO SCIENTIFIC's clone UK 101 character-set which included block graphics and card symbols. And it worked great notwithstanding the somewhat wavy nature of the screen (too much ripple on the power supply) and the fact that the junior could only "compute" during the blanking intervals. In the end my boss decided not to market my TV interface.

This is quickly becoming one of my absolute favorite channels. The quality is outstanding and the topics are fascinating and not talked about enough. I do hope you continue to make great videos!

You deserve so many more subs. Your videos are like watching an interesting history lesson. Props to you.

Looked at Don Lancaster’s Wikipedia page and was sad to find out that he’s passed now. I love learning about these older electronics projects that came decades before I was born. I respect the efforts that went into making something affordable and moderately approachable.

07:35 I loved that SWTPC keyboard. The only keyboard I could find at the time with a square cutout! Much easier than the stepped TAB, RETURN and SPACE bar ! p.s. I remember the joy of jumping from 110 to 300 bps. 1200 was heavenly. 9600 was a year or two later.

Don Lancaster is a stone-cold hero of the micro computer age. I built a computer from a kit and then I found out I really needed a CRT terminal. But the prices of those things! Enter TV typewriter at a third or a fourth of the price of a modest commercial terminal. I didn't know anything about electronics, but it's Don to the rescue again with TTL Cookbook. Still one of my favorite technical writers. What a gifted man.

This is a high quality, entertaining video. I’m impressed with the whole thing, and that’s before I get to the subject itself - which is just fascinating. Really well done!

This is dedication to a replica on a level I have not seen in a long time. Mighty fine work, and a very in-depth exploration of what it took to create such a beautifully primitive and powerful device.

Yet another video that makes me want a collectors item I don’t have the money nor space for, LOL.

I have been reading Don's stuff for many years. His case against patents helped me put the brakes on when an invention company was trying to get their hooks in me. 20 years later I saw where they were ousted as scammers. Much Thanks to Don Lancaster!

Dude, the algorithm is on your side. This showed up as a full yt ad below a tech tangents video I was watching. Definitely subscribing. You are gonna blow up man

SUCH A NICE VIDEO! ONLY 77 VIEWS??!

I'm in my 40s, my dad bought an Apple ][+ when it came out because he was a ham radio guy and had tried and failed to build a computer. "You'd be surprised how hard it was." - Now that I hear the Don Lancaster name again, This is the group of projects he was discussing. And my dad was real good fixing tube radios and tv's. He understood the electrons and waves like some thing he could hold in his hand. I'd love to see like say, audrino code that accomplishes what those 1973 chips and boards did with ascii and character advancement, etc. Really cool channel!

You should replicate that keyboard, because there’s not that many regular ASCII keyboards on the market for people to use nowadays.

Holy moly this professional production quality is worthy of being on tv itself.

I had no idea this existed, nice video.

I’m so glad I came across your channel! I totally forgot about the Lancaster TVT I have in storage I built in the seventies and mounted on a masonite board to use with my IMSAI 8080 so I wouldn’t have to toggle in the binary. Thanks for a great job. I’m binging on the rest of your fare. Your voice and delivery remind me of another great channel, This Old Tony.

This channel is a stroll down memory lane.... I miss my Apple //e. Love the history lessons.

This was one of the first projects I built as a kid. I read about it in Radio-Electronics. I was in high school and needed a terminal for my 8080 kit. It was a lot of fun to build and use.

This is an awesome video (or should I say a full-length documentary) on the subject! Kind of reminds me of LGR Tech Tales but much more retro. As others have already said, I too feel that this is exactly the kind of information that's in a desperate need of an in-depth, hands-on attention these days. To honor and reminisce the dawn of the personal computing in a very enjoyable way. Thank you for taking the precious time and doing exactly that!

I really enjoyed this. I’m just old enough (62) to remember this era of computing where the first complex piece of home computing we owned was the Texas Instruments Sr-50 calculator which after an unfortunate incident in my high school engineering class was sent in for repair and was replaced by the even cooler SR-51. Also took a Fortran class in hs (FORTRAN 3) which introduced me to the teletype to connect with UIC’s mainframe system. My brother and I after college was the Commodore-64 color computer with tape drive and printer. The programmable sprites were a big innovation as was the modem connection to The local BBS communities. So much advancement in such a short time!

Very cool! I've been a fan of Don Lancaster since reading his articles in (I think) the early '90s, in Computer Shopper - tucked into those phonebook-sized issues among the ads for PC clones and assorted parts, the era's version of ebay, One article I recall vividly was on how to hack together a high-end Apple laser printer from a surplus board and a much cheaper printer. I picked up a used copy of "TV Typewriter Cookbook" a few years back - I think a copy is downloadable from Don's site - and keep wanting to put a replica of one of the versions together, though I realize I could just bodge together an Arduino equivalent in an afternoon. Thanks for going into such detail on this, it's a great watch.

Very cool. The production value of this video is crazy high for such a green channel, keep it up!

Great presentation. I built a version of the TVTW using point to point wiring rather than printed circuit boards. I started with Don's schematic, and partitioned the logic into the same 3 boards. However, I used flexible wire and connectors so I could get to all the components to measure voltages. Do used 512 bit shift registers for the memory, but I used 1024 bit shifters so I could have two pages. The "hidden" page was just shifted through during video refresh, and to switch pages, the hidden page bypass was just suppressed for one video frame. Originally, I used an ASCI keyboard I bought from B&F Enterprises. I actually visited B&F in 1973. The place was outside of Boston. It was filled with all kinds of surplus electronic stuff. Later, after I built a home brew 8080 computer, I modified the TVTW and keyboard to interface them to the 8080. Lots of fun. I wrote a very compact "game of life" with the TVTW as the display and the keyboard as the input to set up the cells. I still have the stuff in my "museum" along with good photographic records. Thanks!

I remember seeing Lancaster's 'Cheap Video Cookbook' in the library in my childhood, at the time I had no EE education so it didn't really make sense, but it was still fascinating for some reason.

Hey thanks for taking the time to answer my comment! The song seems like it'll be really fun to play. I appreciate your videos and the level of detail you put into them. Thanks again.

I've never been good at programming, but reading the jargon file made me feel like I understood something about the early days of computing and this video reminds me of that anthropological thrill of seeing people do something amazing you barely understand.

I've been binging on your videos this evening, and they're all terrific. It's great to see a nice long, in-depth overview of this foundational equipment. I'm getting pretty tired of retro channels that are 80% washing and retrobrighting C64s!

Don Lancaster's articles and books were fun to read. He was a real genius.

Pretty enlightening video. I was unaware of Don Lancaster and the TV Typewriter. In the fall of 1973, I was a freshman in high school and had a Television Production class. We used a Kapco Enterprises KG-1632 Character generator which basically had just a bit more functionality than the TV Typewriter. I still have this unit, but I have never found any further information on the company that produced it. Anyway, if I was using this unit in the fall of '73, there must have been other developers out there with TV Typewriters already?

A friend and I both built the TV typewriter in our junior year of High school. Took a while to debug due to bad chips. But we both got them working. Built a Altair 8800 the next year and interfaced it with a serial link to the TV typewriter.

"roll their own" was comedy gold. you thought that would fly under the radar but I caught it hard in the gut.

I thought I recognized that keyboard! I had two of those MDS keyboard-to-tape units in my teen bedroom! I used them as desks and puttered with them at times. And I followed Lancaster in all of his articles. Thanks for the great trip down memory lane!

Great video and thank you giving a little bit of pre history to the TV Typewriter and giving credit to those who came before Apple. The two Steve's definitely deserve to be remembered for everything they did in building "Apple", but they always took more credit than they deserved.

Oh yess... sesame street, that animation with the marbles numbers and flashing numbers... psychadelic. Excellent documentary! I didn't knew this was even in 70's before the micro's in the early 80's. I have respect for these people.

Don Lancaster was my nerd idol after I graduated from Tech school in 1980. I remember all those great projects and articles he published in Radio Electronics.

I remember reading about that several years back. Just tells me the world was ready for home computers.

This was a really cool video. I appreciate the time you took to add humor and go into detail. Look forward to seeing more!

Wow, this is a great milestone in hobby computer history. I vaguely remembered it but now I feel like an expert. Great video!

This was great! Looking forward to the build video!

Raise your hand if you remember the book (and even saw it for sale a/o borrowed it from a library)! *raises hand*

I'm currently, slowly, making my way through the BYTE magazine archives, and of course see articles from Don Lancaster and references to the TV Typewriter a bunch. Thanks for this great documentary which answered many of my questions.

I remember pouring over his book as a teenager, great stuff

Yeah I remember Don Lancaster... He dropped a lot of gadgets to the pages of Popular Electronics. I was reading them starting in the early 70's. 1973 I was in the fifth grade and already building electronic gadgets.

I've always wanted to learn more about this! I've also never gotten an ad for a good video before, which is strange.

This early era of electronics is both fascinating and terrifying to look back at from the modern computer age, a time when computers were built by hand in garages and the solution to a design not having a feature you wanted was to solder on a circuit that added those features yourself.

02:58 - "But while the average person might not have been salivating..." shown over a clip from a Salvo commercial. Salivating vs. Salvo. Well played, Sir.

I actually built a device to add an image to the upper right of the TVTW screen as a computer science project. I had a blast designing and adding this gizmo to the SWTP kit!

Great video, notwithstanding the loud background music, I found it very interesting. I had Don's book 'The Cheap Video Cookbook' back in the very late 70s with the intention of possibly building a video display for my F8 single board development kit. However the video circuitry described in the book was really IIRC specifically for the KIM-1 and relied on a mysterious 'upstream tap' signal that basically did cycle-stealing from the processor, so that stymied my hopes of a more generic version. Is the Feb 1973 R-E magazine article for building the keyboard available online anywhere? I looked but couldn't find it. EDIT Never mind, I just found it on the deramp site!

all right, born in 75? Really cool seeing someone closer to my age talking about vintage electronics from a "been there" perspective. I was born in 1980, and that seems like a big world of difference, but in America home computing was slow going. Compared to across the ocean where they were doing home computing for almost every household in the UK the US was way behind. I was so very VERY interested in computers ever since I was just a little girl, but the only computer I got to use regularly in the early 80s was my 1st brother's grandparent's computer, the Commodore 64. I'd have to wait until 1st grade to play with Apple II computers at school. And still, we had no home computer because my parents foolishly thought all I'd do with it was play video games. By the time I got grand dad's old computer it was 1993 and the machine was on its way out for bigger, grander machines. I did care though, I finally had something I could learn on, and I used it nearly every single day. I did have to re-learn how to type though, since computers in the 80s still used the old typewriter positions of certain symbols and the modern keyboard layout that we know today was not standard. Sorry I went off on such a tangent. I just want to say that this 40 year old lady is now subscribed to your channel and I hope to see many many more videos from you.

Cheap Video Cookbook and Son of Cheap Video were my favorite tech books ever. Still have them on a bookshelf next to my bed. I just loved the idea of using a 6502 running strange code out of a tiny ROM to generate all the signals necessary to scan display memory and generate H & V sync signals.

Pronounced Tin ah ha. Don is a great guy. Years ago I spent a 4th of July with him and Bee. We chatted the day away, and I went with him to meet the fire department and help setup fireworks. It was great. Like meeting my hero. I read every article, and bought all his books. Thanks for the video!

the music is lovely... that semi computer terminal looks epic asf too

"Roll their own". Very nice!

This is fascinating to learn about so thank you!

It's really cool that you built your own replica

I've really enjoyed watching this and other videos on your channel. I especially like the humor - just the right balance in my opinion. The scene where you are reluctant to push the key then switch to a fireball was classic! Keep up the great work. I am a tad senior to your age. Built my Quest Super Elf when I was 12 - no internet - different world back then. These videos bring back so many memories.

I‘ve got this video as an commercial in the video suggestions and I‘m just so glad I clicked on it! It‘s just so informative, interesting and the 45 minutes just felt like 10. Great work, please keep going with it and I hope that you‘re getting more views soon, you totally deserve it! :)

I wanted to build one for the longest time, but many of the of the components are pretty scarce, andnthe project is massive. The TVT6 is pretty amazing in that it consolidates the whole thing waaay down. I saw you have an unassembled kit for this, might you make a replacement board (as to not mess with your original kit) and try to build one in the future? It seems like it would be much simpler, and allow SBC builders to add on a terminal pretty cheap and easily. Great video, and very nice work on your TVT!

Cool video. So detailed!

Great video. Thank you for sharing.

Bro. What the fuck? This channel is fucking incredible. How have I only just now been suggested this channel by the KZfaq algorithm? Solid channel and content. Crazy how much these dudes did to make computers so accessible and all I use my computer for is watching videos of Age of Empires 2 competitions and hardcore pornography.

Thank you for providing this trip down memory lane. I received one of the original set of stackable boards from a friend and got it working and installed it in a wood cabinet. It wasn’t particle but I did learn a lot getting it to work on my Explorer S100 kit. It was a slight improvement over my noisy mechanical baudot terminal. The 70s was a great time for tinkerers.

Don was the Man! All Hail Don..

Really great video!! I love how informative and entertaining your channel is. Keep it up!

My parents had such a carpet. I loved it!

I built one in 1973. Never had it working 100%.

Wow, great video and a great portion of knowledge. You've got my sub, dear sir!

Thank you!

I have that keyboard. I deisgned / build a PCB that interfaced with it, scanning rows. The parallel outout went into a Super Elf (1802) and was used for many years. Although the Super Elf was given away, I still have the keyboard.

Wow, very interesting story and build! Thank you for sharing.

Excellent video. It needs a lot more views!

Thank you so much for this video! I was born in 1978 and at some point (evidently between 1973 and 1978) my father (an electrical engineer in the 60's-mid 80's) built one of these that sat up high on a filing cabinet. I was rarely allowed to touch it, but I would sneak typing sessions here and there just to play around. He had built it encased in thick Plexiglas, and I vaguely remember seeing stacked boards like you mention. I always knew it was impressive but I hadn't realized just how difficult a lot of the parts had to be to obtain. Like you say, we are so spoiled now with being able to grab electronic components on a whim cheaply and easily. Even if he had access to stuff through work (which I doubt) it had to be a challenge to get and build everything. SUBSCRIBED!

I absolutely love to hear you talk about this. You are very good at describing key concepts with great visual aids, and it's clear that you put a lot of time into research and production. I'm currently planning my own Z80 based homebrew machine and I'm soon entering the breadboard phase, so I feel extra inspired by seeing the photos of your TVT build.

Amazing video to the very end. I always wanted one of these. Also impressed with your attention to detail. Didn't see any non-period correct components on the whole build. Just the way I'd do it if I were so inclined someday!

Wow you video production is absolutely excellent! I can see myself spending way too much time on this channel.

All your videos are so high quality and educational! I collect and enjoy reading older BYTE magazines and Popular Electronics, and these videos are a great supplement. Thanks!

I am now on Don's web site... That man did a lot to make my early days of electronics fun

The late 60s and early 70s were the golden age of electronics as the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors and ICs was all but complete. Then came the analog to digital era. I built one complex project from Radio Electronics magazine. That was the vidicon TV camera by Gary Davis. I had the pleasure to meet Gary 40 years after the fact and discuss it with him. There was, as mentioned in this video, a serious schematic error I was never aware of. The horizontal sync coming out of the camera was 40 volts pk-pk! I was able to get the picture on a vacuum tube Setchell Carlson TV I owned by direct video input. So, the project was a success. Gary asked me if I'd seen the correction in the following issue of the magazine. I had not. All I could say to him was, "DOH!". It was still a cool project. It was my second TV camera and I was only 14 when I built it.

Excellent! Really interesting :)

Hello from the UK. I still have my CMOS Cookbook by Don Lancaster and remember the TVT and BitBoffer in the contents.

Thank you for sharing both your own craft, along with the research and backstory to lodge it firmly in the timestream. This was a fun watch, and I do enjoy the way you approach both video editing and information presentation.

So many people seem to be complaining about the music. I think it was ambient enough to be unnoticeable and gave a pleasant richness to the background (especially since it wasn't some standard electronic music people usually use in retro computer videos) - there is some high pitch noise for example at 31 minutes. Some people like David from The 8-bit Guy have mentioned that with age some noises are no longer audible to some people and that he himself usually checks audio track for noise by looking at sound graph - so perhaps I simply don't find the music as offensive because I don't hear some parts people deem "loud" with my advancing age or my audio setup is better balanced. But all in all - two videos in - superb content. Thank you very much.

Good job with the Video. I think this channel will blow up.

Very Interesting video for someone interested in history of personal computer and old display technologies. I learned a lot from it. Thank you very much.

The algorithm led me here. And I'm glad I did, this was pretty interesting and funny.

Watched a couple of your videos, the joke with the hammer finally got me to hit subscribe, love your humor!

Your TV Typewriter is a thing of beauty. Also, thanks for the pointer to Don's website. I plan to look at some of the PDF's of his books.

In the 70s my favorite Don Lancaster publication is the CMOS COOKBOOK first published in 1977. The edition I have is a first edition seventh printing 1982 paperback, published by Howard W. Sams & Company. The book focused on the CMOS 4000 B-Series, very easy to use and very low power. I remember being challenged at work in a contest with other EEs to build the lowest power periodic blinky LED light for a vehicle monitor. Much like you see in cars today, that blinky light on the dash board at the base of the windshield. The final design ran for over 5 years on a 9V battery. I don't really know how long it lasted after the 5 years because I changed jobs. From the 4000 B series offerings the 4046 Phase Locked Loop is probably the most interesting IC I used. PLLs are really fascinating to me. The 4060 14 stage binary ripple counter with internal oscillator was also a lot of fun.

Hey TimeTraveller, awesome vid. I found it thoroughly interesting, and funny. Sort of got me interested in vintage electronics.

That Ohm joke at 17:12 has me still giggling a full two minutes later. xD

Great video! You deserve 1000X more subs!

Really well done documentary. 🏆

You deserve way more subscribers.