Which used the same technique as the Apple 1 video terminal, though Woz claims not to have known about it when designing it. Probably true, because there weren't many inexpensive options for RAM besides shift registers!

https://www.willegal.net/appleii/apple1.htm

I wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't come across it and perhaps forgotten about it. Nevertheless simultaneous invention happens all the time.

> Nevertheless simultaneous invention happens all the time.

Try telling that to Isaac Newton. :)

Or better yet Edison or the USPTO.

Actually, some microcomputers (apart from bare board micros) had the option to use a TV as a monitor in the early days.

Some? In my experience it was almost all. At least that's how it was in the UK.

The article is from 1973. I think exact eras are getting a little muddled here. Altair, Mark-8, SCELBI, these are the sort of home computer that came out shortly AFTER this project was published.

Ah, serves me right for jumping straight to the comments. I had in mind computers from a few years later like my Nascom 2 from 1979.

It really all happened quite quickly.

You are probably right. I first wrote "many", then edited it to say "some", in the interest of accuracy, since I had only used a few kinds myself, and did not know if all the others supported that feature or not :)

Did all that, before your reply, BTW.

And this technique was also used for video output on the Sinclair ZX-80 if I am not mistaken.

He later had books mentioned in other comments: "The Cheap Video Cookbook" and "Son of Cheap Video". In these he added just a few TTLs to a Kim-1 computer and generated video using mostly software.

The Sinclair ZX-80 was much closer to this than to the TV Typewriter (which was 100% hardware). Some other computers that used this technique back in the day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aamber_Pegasus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_(computer)

And here is a recent project:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigatron_TTL