Model: 745
Adapter: 220 vac
Year: 1971
Info: The Silent 700, introduced in 1971, was a line of portable computer terminals manufactured by Texas Instruments in the 1970s and 1980s. Silent 700s printed with a 5 x 7 dot-matrix heating element onto a roll of heat-sensitive paper. Some models were equipped with an integrated acoustic coupler and modem that could receive data at 30 characters per second. Other models could be directly connected to computers at 300 bits/second (bps), and were sometimes used as the System console where a hard copy record of the activities would be retained for a period of time. The Silent 700s were marketed as being extremely portable and reliable, “designed to use a minimum of moving parts, eliminating wear elements” (Texas Instruments). They included features like a built-in acoustic coupler that allowed the user to call into a remote computer system from any telephone and a built-in thermal printer which would quietly (user reports from the 70’s indicate that “silent” was a stretch) (Hannigan 4) print with a dot-matrix heating element onto thermal paper. Thermal paper was thin paper that was specially coated in heat sensitive material that would change color when exposed to heat, thus giving physical form to the data being transmitted. The Silent 700 models printed data at a speed of 30 characters per second. The 735 model weighed 25 pounds and cost $2,595 (approximately $12,400 in 2019), while the streamlined 745 model weighed only 13 pounds and cost $1995 (approximately $9,500 in 2019) (Texas Instruments).