Hi Lindsay,

You are, truly, fortunate, as you say! And I like to think you're getting a better education than I, and people of my generation did, when we had to find a work-around for nearly everything. Being resourceful and lazy, I managed to fudge my way through a lot, and still graduated with honors. I sure don't recommend this, though. There are gaps that shouldn't be there, and wouldn't be if I'd had to be more accountable.

Rachael



----- Original Message -----
From: "Lindsay Yazzolino" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "Braillenote List" <[email protected]
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 21:41:30 -0700
Subject: Re: [Braillenote] Punched Cards

Hi Brian and Rachael,

Thanks for the information. Wow, I didn't realize that a storage
medium such
as the punch card could exist for this many years. Imagine having
to use
similar devices for storing information on our BrailleNotes--but
I guess we
wouldn't have those either if that were the case. This is just
one of the
many examples of why I become more and more thankful every day
that I am
growing up in this present time period!
Lindsay
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
AIM: LindsayYazz
MSN Messenger: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
SKYPE: lindsay3.14
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Lingard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: "Braillenote List" <[email protected]
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2006 9:23 PM
Subject: [Braillenote] Punched Cards


Ottawa Canada

A punched card was a piece of light cardboard about the size of
a
government cheque that had 12 rows and 80 columns  Data was
recorded on the card by punching holes in it.  Numbers were a
single punch in a given column while letters, punctuation and
special characters required two or more punches in a given
column..

They used to send one with various bills, like your telephone
bill, some utility bills with your account number and amount
owing already punched into the card and would punch the amount
of
your payment into it when you sent it in with your cheque.

Then they fed the cards to either what were called unit record
(another name for a punched card) tabulating machines or into a
card reader connected to a computer and credit your payment to
your account.

Punched cards were the most common form of data processing
medium
for years, like from about 1890 until maybe 20 years ago.

They were invented by Herman Hollerith, the Chief of the U.S.
Bureau Of The Census to speed the processing of census data.
Back then they didn't have computers in 1890, but they invented
mechanical punched card processing machines to sort, list, add
up
and do other operations that are very tedious to do manually
when
you are dealing with millions of pieces of data.

A punched card is also known as an IBM card because IBM  was a
major manufacturer of punched card equipment.

Hope this explains what a punched card is.

Brian

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