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Sociology of airports

You need dot matrix (or the older golfball type) printers to print multipart forms, which are still used in ancient southern European airports for the GENDEC etc.

Multipart is an expensive paper.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

You need dot matrix (or the older golfball type) printers to print multipart forms

That, and I guess to print out a ton of A4 sheets must be hugely impractical. Better to have it on one continuous roll. I guess there are no laser printers for continuous sheets of paper?

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

LeSving wrote:

That, and I guess to print out a ton of A4 sheets must be hugely impractical. Better to have it on one continuous roll.

@LeSving, you mean the absorbant paper roll? :)

EGTR

He he. Not exactly.

Like this:

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

That comes handy for non-graphical NOTAMS

Last Edited by Ibra at 20 Sep 08:17
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

LeSving wrote:

He he. Not exactly.

Like this:

@LeSving, I know! :) I’ve actually used those things on old Soviet computers (together with punch tapes, pre-matrix printers).
I was just trying to facetious, as the most common name for the things that no one really reads at some point was “Toilet Times”.

EGTR

Nothing is as dissuading to perform a closer inspection of what has been done as one mile of dusty folders stacked in an equally dusty and dark room on shelfs which look as they are likely to collapse at the first movement.

I would not be surprised that if somewhere in Southeastern Europe in a very dusty and dark archive there are some stone tablets which hold the original accident report of Icarus.

I vividly recall my attempt to pay a parking fine in Corfu. Took a full day and visits to about 20 offices until one officer finally found the copy of the ticket I had and then sent me to pay the approximately 20 Euros to an office across the town. The filing cabinets I saw during this ordeal looked like they had been started by Homer himself and his Odyssee inspired by the search for a particular piece of parchment written out to someone who accidently left his horse and carriage on the parking space of the city governor or similar. One of those guys said to me: “You know what we really need here? A computer.” To which my not quite correct answer was “I’d start with a vaccum cleaner”. 3 Ouzos later my fine was paid up.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Oh btw, I once visited a weather station somwhere which shall be unnamed to protect the innocent bastards who do a great job there.

Now this is one station, active since probably the 1890ties. It consists of the observation platform high up the light house, a room below which houses the telegraph with which the messages got sent to headquarters, featuring a very reliable piece of equipment including a morse key and a machine featuring a one inch wide paper roll on which incoming and outgoing messages were stenciled into.

That was about 1990. I guess they might have 4G there by now.

In the cellar an archive housing all the paper rolls since the first day is housed. Just in case someone would like to know what the Synop was on the day the Titanic sank. Hopefully someone is still able to read this stuff.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 21 Sep 13:39
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland
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