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golf-ball printer

   printing device and terminal based on the IBM Selectric
   typewriter.  The `golf ball' was a little spherical frob bearing
   reversed embossed images of 88 different characters arranged on
   four parallels of latitude; one could change the font by swapping
   in a different golf ball.  This was the technology that enabled APL
   to use a non-EBCDIC, non-ASCII, and in fact completely non-standard
   character set.  This put it 10 years ahead of its time --- where it
   stayed, firmly rooted, for the next 20, until character displays
   gave way to programmable bit-mapped devices with the flexibility to
   support other character sets.