Back in the days before big iron, when radix sorts and prefix sums
were done on heterogenous, special-purpose meter-scale processing
elements and throughput computing scaled up to several thousands of
records per hour, they'd apparently already recognized the value of
loop unrolling -- quite literally!
Tape-Controlled Carriage, IBM 407 manual of operation* p.121
The marking for one form should be repeated as
many times as the usable length of the tape (22
inches) will allow. With the tape thus serving to
control several forms in one revolution through the
sensing mechanism, the life of the tape is increased.
-Dave
* IBM 407 Accounting Machine 1953 (Form 22-5765-7)
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/punchedCard/AccountingMachine/
22-5765-7_407_Operation_1953.pdf
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