The Great 202 Jailbreak - Computerphile
Computerphile2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2015–2024
interview · general · evergreen · 2015–2024 on HN
Computerphile with Professor Brailsford on how a 1979 Bell Labs team reverse engineered a Linotron 202 phototypesetter over a summer to get high-quality print output. It covers typesetting history and the later 2013 rebuild of the famous vacation memo.
Recommended alongside the original paper and Unix history threads as an engaging account of the typesetter hack.
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3 comments from Hacker News
> As one might expect, Bell Labs didn't use the paper tape input tangentially related. The Great 202 Jailbreak - Computerphile ▶ this video staring the inimitable Professor Brailsford.
Computerphile interviewed one of the writers of this paper in a series of videos, who explained the brilliant and exiting history of this paper and its recreation, as well as the history of Phototypesetters. 1. ▶ this video 2. link 3. link
0:16:40 For those who haven't seen it before, there's a Computerphile video ▶ this video (related video: link ) about the hacking of the typesetting machine, a Mergenthaler Linotron 202. 0:24:31 The photo must be the one at link (probably the webpage, on Dennis Ritchie's old website, that made it famous recently).