"Pictures" via video capture and dot matrix printer

[Curt at Atari Museum]

Atari actually cashed in on this capability in the mid 70's with its 
Compugrah Foto booths:

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/arcade/fullsize/compugraph-back.jpg


Curt



Dennis Boone wrote:

>I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Mona Lisa prints.  The I/O room
>at MSU's Computer Center had a large image generated by scanning a
>photo of the painting.  A scheme was worked out of which characters
>(multiples in some cases) were drawn in any given cell to add up
>to the appropriate darkness.  I believe it was actually output to a
>plotter which took a substantial amount of time to complete the job.
>I would have guessed most large centers would have had such things.
>
>On a more personal note, in the 1985-86 time frame I was working for
>a software outfit that did real estate systems.  The R&D wizard there
>built hardware which went into standard serial terminals (Esprit
>6310's; can't recall if there was ever a version in the TeleVideo
>925's) to display 4 bit images of homes.  The card worked by going
>into the video chain of the terminal to overlay images, and into the
>serial chain to grab bits.  It was not intelligent; simply a marble
>machine which recognized a specific introductory escape sequence and
>then clocked nibbles into its video ram.  The images were taken with
>Sony cameras which wrote them to 2" floppies.  I think the storage
>may have been analog video, actually.  They were then digitized using
>a video frame grabber board in a standard PC and uploaded to the host.
>
>In addition to screen display, we did MLS books with the images
>integrated, etc.  The output was generally done on Printronix P-300
>printers, which were dot-addressable.  (For those who haven't
>met one of these machines, they had a shuttle with 132 "pixel"
>hammers.  The shuttle would work from left to right stopping at 8
>or so positions.  The hammers would print the top row of dots in
>the characters of the current line, then the paper would move up one
>"raster" line and the shuttle would run right to left doing the next
>row.  Eventually one row of characters would be completely printed.
>A P-300 could print about 300 lines per minute.  The shuttle and the
>many print hammers gave the printers a distinctive sound.  In addition
>to the all-points-addressable mode, you could build or buy custom
>ROMs with special characters in them.)
>
>A few of us went into the office one weekend evening shortly after the
>"Live Aid" concert with a video tape of the show, and grabbed and
>printed a fair number of images from the performances.  The 4-bit
>graphics made interesting work of lens stars from the stage lighting.
>
>De
>
>
>  
>


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