As good as its name

Flashback to the days when this pilot fish is working in a Navy office that has just received a new wide-carriage, high-speed dot-matrix printer called a "Sprinter."

"This printer was a pinfeed model designed to work with the wide variety of greenbar paper popular on mainframes," says fish. "This design resulted in a printer that was six inches deep and about two feet wide."

That's not the only thing that looks funny about it. So that it won't take up table space, the printer stands about 30 inches tall on a pair of skinny metal legs with eight-inch feet -- a nice wide stance.

But it's when the cables are connected and fish and his co-workers fire it up for the first tests that the printer shows its true, um, uniqueness.

The first thing the group notices is that the characteristic high-pitched whine of the gears and the dot-matrix print head are even higher-pitched and louder than they've heard before -- in part because this printer is twice as fast as models they're familiar with.

Then, as they watch in amazement, the printer begins to sway as the print head is flung from side to side.

"That sway began lifting the feet slightly from the floor," fish says, "and the Sprinter walked itself across the floor until it reached the end of the power cord -- and unplugged itself."

For a moment, everyone stares stunned in the sudden silence at the now motionless printer.

Then someone runs off to locate a longer power cord to try it again.

Eventually, the noise -- particularly the laughter -- from the computer room attracts the attention of fish's manager, who arrives to find the whole team watching the Sprinter print and sprint.

But he doesn't mind -- at least not until one of fish's cohorts suggests that, if the manager would OK buying another unit, they could have Sprinter races and make bets on whose program listings would make the printer run fastest.

Says fish, "I watched the complex series of looks go across his face as he ran through the permutations of 'That would be fun' and ended with 'If I get caught encouraging this, my career is toast.'

"Career won and the next day maintenance came up to bolt the Sprinter securely to the floor."

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