A steam punk VDU ?
If you know Charles Stross's "Laundry" series you'll know that the narrators boss uses a thing called a Memex to store and query information held on micrfiche cards.
It's known that Charles Babbage planned to link a printer directly to his Analytical Engine to eliminate typos when producing navigation tables. On that basis I think a "steam punk" teletype would not be that difficult.
But a VDU? Something that displays (and edits) characters on a screen without electricity?
I'll accept any technology, mechanical, photographic, chemical, biological, pneumatic, etc.
To keep it simple(ish) it only needs to support 1 font in both upper and lower case. No graphics, no color but it should allow last line editing.
I think the keyboard should be fairly easy, it's the display that's tricky. Creating a reusable surface that's erasable and re-writable without semiconductor storage.
I'll be interested to see what comes up.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
