Key punch cards were also used for computer programing back in the days of Dos. I took computers in college back then and we used a key punch machine to key in all the commands for a program like Colbolt. You then sent the cards through a printer and it would come out on paper. Remember the old computer paper, where the pages were connected and it had the holes on the side.
I started out with a flow chart, brailled my commands, keypunched all the commands printed the commands, corrected errors on the cards with a reader and reprinted the program. Hopefully this time it should be correct. Now we are in the windows world and the world of speach and braille. There were a few embossers out back then, but I did everything by keypunch, print and readers. Terry Powers -----Original Message----- From: Brian Lingard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 12:24 AM To: Braillenote List 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 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.1/312 - Release Date: 14/04/2006 ___ To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote ___ To leave the BrailleNote list, send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To view the list archives or change your preferences, visit http://list.humanware.com/mailman/listinfo/braillenote
