The Tom Swift Terminal: A Convivial Cybernetic Device

1974

A description of Illich’s concept of Convivial Design and its relation to the computer, as well as information to build a basic computer terminal.

Hosted at Internet Archive

“Throughout 1973, Felsenstein had been looking for a low-cost terminal for the Community Memory bulletin board system. He had designed the Pennywhistle modem to address the need for remote access at a price under $100, but the terminal that they hooked it up to still cost $1500.

Felsenstein began designing a printed circuit board that would combine the video output of the TV Typewriter with 1024 bytes of memory so it could hold a page of text in ASCII format and send it to a video monitor. He called the resulting design “The Tom Swift Terminal”, after the Tom Swift books. The design manual also had an extended section on the concept of “convivial design” (essentially “friendly”), which argued that a device’s social utility was inversely proportional to its complexity, and thus devices should be as simple and open-ended as possible. Felsenstein sold the design document to local hobbyists, and wrote an article on it in the People’s Computer Company in early 1974.By 1975, the system had still not been assembled by anyone.

In April 1975, Bob Marsh and Gary Ingram formed Processor Technology initially to sell expansion cards for the Altair. Marsh approached Felsenstein with the idea of modifying the Tom Swift design to work with the Altair, which had been released that January. A key aspect of the resulting design was the use of electronic switches that allow the display and the computer to access different parts of the on-board memory at the same time, which means the display hardware does not have to stop the computer while it is drawing. The prototype was completed in less than three months.” –source, Wikipedia