IBM MT/ST

The IBM MT/ST (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter, and known in Europe as MT72[1]) was a model of the IBM Selectric typewriter, built into its own desk, integrated with magnetic tape recording and playback facilities, located in an attached enclosure, with controls and a bank of relays.

[4] Most models had two tape drives, which greatly facilitated revision and enabled features such as mail merge.

[1] The MT/ST was also used as a data entry device for early issues of the RILM Abstracts scholarly publication at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

It used typeballs similar but not interchangeable with those of the Selectric, with three type sizes (10, 12, and 15 characters per inch), fractional interword spacing, bold, italic (but not bold italic), and a variety of serif and sans-serif typefaces, such as Bodoni, Univers, Times Roman, and the like.

The MT/ST and MT/SC combination (two machines) put the rapid production of camera-ready copy, for the first time, within the budget of a small to medium-sized publisher.