I wonder how many implementations there were of that sort of thing. I wrote one for an HP flatbed plotter sometime in the 80s to digitize plots from papers, bu

I wonder how many implementations there were of that sort of thing. I wrote one for an HP flatbed plotter sometime in the 80s to digitize plots from papers, but I never heard of another. I don't remember the implementation, but it must have been cheaper hardware than the one shown, and only had a plastic lens as the sight. (Nowadays you have http://markummitchell.github.io/engauge-digitizer http://markummitchell.github.io/engauge-digitizer for instance.) I mainly used the plotter for acetate slides for talks when I'd only seen hand-written ones. Some related history of input/output in physics: At the time, the "Bubblies" (bubble chamber particle physicists) used "flying spot digitizers" on their photos; I don't know how they worked, and to what degree they were automated. In contrast to that sophisticated input, HEP output was mainly histograms on line printer paper, stacked high, occasionally the grotty Tektronix 401x storage tube. Fortunately, nuclear physics had fast direct manipulation vector graphics and Benson roll pen plotters -- from whose song you could recognize types of plot across the room. Later the colour plots were sacrificed to faster monochrome Versatec electrostatics. (The Versatec printed my thesis, the first I knew produced electronically locally, long before we had an implementation of TeX.)