Very interesting article, and not just about the dance notation typeball.
The 1962 print ad says "Potential speed becomes practical speed, thanks to a stroke storage system that releases type characters in sequence no matter how fast the typing."
I got curious about the "stroke storage system" - was it mechanical, electronic, or what?
The Wikipedia page has an explanation of this mechanical storage:
> The machine had a feature called "Stroke Storage" that prevented two keys from being depressed simultaneously. When a key was depressed, an interposer, beneath the keylever, was pushed down into a slotted tube full of small metal balls (called the "compensator tube") and spring latched. These balls were adjusted to have enough horizontal space for only one interposer to enter at a time. (Mechanisms much like this were used in keyboards for teleprinters before World War II.) If a typist pressed two keys simultaneously both interposers were blocked from entering the tube. Pressing two keys several milliseconds apart allows the first interposer to enter the tube, tripping a clutch which rotated a fluted shaft driving the interposer horizontally and out of the tube. The powered horizontal motion of the interposer selected the appropriate rotate and tilt of the printhead for character selection, but also made way for the second interposer to enter the tube some milliseconds later, well before the first character had been printed. While a full print cycle was 65 milliseconds this filtering and storage feature allowed the typist to depress keys in a more random fashion and still print the characters in the sequence entered.
There is an example in the corner of the picture of the dancer leaping over a typeball. But yeah, it is just a small example and there is no explanation of what the symbols mean.
Amusingly, there was an early "scientific" word processor for the IBM PC, that simulated the Selectric math ball. You pressed one of the extra keys (maybe "alt" but I don't remember) and got the alternative ball. You could also move up and down by half lines. It was very quick to type math.
I used it for my dissertation. The page numbering feature could not be adapted to my university's requirements, so I printed out my manuscript without page numbers, and pasted them in by hand, then had the whole thing photocopied.
I have an IBM Selectric that I purchased at a thrift store. It is a marvel engineering. It was too much to resist. I have not used it, but I tried it out. It works. It really is a fine machine. I think I will spin it up and exercise it.
I wonder if one of those dance type balls is available any where. I suppose not, but it would be fun to try it out.
I'd love to know if labanotation has actually been effective in dance. It might work for choreographed works, but I feel like it might fail for a newer person relying on it over practice.
Yes, it works great and not difficult to read. There are limitations, mostly because of symbol overload when expressing more complex movement. Ballet is simple to read because ballet consists of mostly well-defined upright movement. Modern dance, of which ballet is a subset, has a lot of floor work. That becomes difficult to express.
There's one source of truth, Ann Guest, and some people are frustrated at not getting the most precise answers.
The system encompasses the entire body up to fingertips.
Amazing mechanics, there is a lot to learn by just examining the mechanism of these. As a kid I had access to one, my mom had one at home. I distinctly remember how fast the ball moved because I got a nice 'J' imprint on my pinkie trying to see what would happen. That hurt (predictable). That taught me not to mess with live machinery and to have respect for things that move faster than you can follow with your eyes.
It’s still amazing that a printing element with this radius could achieve accurate character registration.
I remember the type all’s being such a part of pop culture that a televised game show, involving contestants identifying objects in a black bag by touch alone, were expected to identify a typeball as a common, everyday object.
The 1962 print ad says "Potential speed becomes practical speed, thanks to a stroke storage system that releases type characters in sequence no matter how fast the typing."
I got curious about the "stroke storage system" - was it mechanical, electronic, or what?
The Wikipedia page has an explanation of this mechanical storage:
> The machine had a feature called "Stroke Storage" that prevented two keys from being depressed simultaneously. When a key was depressed, an interposer, beneath the keylever, was pushed down into a slotted tube full of small metal balls (called the "compensator tube") and spring latched. These balls were adjusted to have enough horizontal space for only one interposer to enter at a time. (Mechanisms much like this were used in keyboards for teleprinters before World War II.) If a typist pressed two keys simultaneously both interposers were blocked from entering the tube. Pressing two keys several milliseconds apart allows the first interposer to enter the tube, tripping a clutch which rotated a fluted shaft driving the interposer horizontally and out of the tube. The powered horizontal motion of the interposer selected the appropriate rotate and tilt of the printhead for character selection, but also made way for the second interposer to enter the tube some milliseconds later, well before the first character had been printed. While a full print cycle was 65 milliseconds this filtering and storage feature allowed the typist to depress keys in a more random fashion and still print the characters in the sequence entered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter