Paper tape was there you just did not see it unless you was an operator.
If no where else it was on the printers for channel control.
This admittedly was wider than the normal 8 channel tape for many of the
newer printers.
Tape was used for very small updates (well at least by me) to a program
source as this was quicker than sending to the punch room for processing
that usually cost 1 - 2 days depending on site.
Oh, this was in the 60's and possibly early 70's when it started dying
out but many sites did not through them away.
Luckily the tape hand punches you could just leave it in your desk or
put it in the pocket when leaving for the day if you wanted to do some
mods after dinner.
The portable card punch was sightly bigger :) - more a case of putting
it into your (brief) case with some blank cards but no printing facility
of course - for that you had to visit the punch room and use one of the
URCs (Unit Record devises) that read them and printed content along the top.
Sorry for that - I go back a bit :)
Vince
On 13/01/17 20:25, Carmen Vitullo wrote:
First time I saw paper tape was in school, Vo-Tech, UNIVAC system in 1974-75,
once in the real world starting @ Sears in 1977 never saw paper tape again and
not since, lots of cards no paper tape .
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Marchant" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2017 2:21:58 PM
Subject: Paper tape (was Re: Hidden Figures)
On Fri, 13 Jan 2017 13:56:57 -0600, Mike Schwab wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape
About 1974-75, I lived with my dad, manager of a Kroger store. At
night he would insert various strips of punch film into a reader to
report the store's daily transactions.
Well into the 1970's almost every mainframe shop used paper tape.
What was it used for?
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