Brian's Teleprompter Simplex

[STUPID BOB]

I built a teleprompter many years ago. It took me several tries and more trips to Radio Shack than most people make in a lifetime.

Several months ago, I rigged one up that is quite like the one Brian put together. Mine was good enough to sell after service for 3 bills. The results were good.

The major difference between my design and Brian's is that I added a speed function that involved several lines of code and an illegal hack into a program that will remain unnamed.

You will need a laptop for ease of use. I can see in my mind's eye a way to use any sized CRT, but that involves building another frame and heavy lifting. Brian's design is simpler and quicker. I built mine to survive WWIII. The crafting of the frame isn't covered in his article. Don't worry. If you aren't handy with a saw, your neighbor most likely is and Home Desperate will cut board for you at about 50 cents a slice, even the 45 degree cuts you'll need to mount the glass into the frame members. The glass cutting is simple. I don't know what he used to edge his pane. I used felt from Wally World's fabric department. Incidently, the glass pane size will directly impact the size of the frame. I made my pane 40 inches square. If you are crafty and very small, you might get away with a pane that is one inch wider than the computer screen you have. My thought there was the size of MY frame in a chair. And, you might build it with a bit more finesse and make it portable.

I used Page Maker to format the text, he used InDesign. I eliminated one of his missteps (backward reading) through good planning. Brian P. Lawler is a creativepro.com contributing editor

His design is available here:

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/22302.html

Have fun!