Punched cards didn't have to be readable Hollerith; the maximum storage
per card was 80 12-bit columns, or 960 bits when binary punched.
The average card is about .006" or so thick by 3 by 8".
(About 6700 bits per cubic inch of card; compare that to a CD in its case
at 440,000,000 bits/cubic inch.)
We still use the cards in our machine shop; they're quite handy for
temporary shims, keeping metal parts from marring each other, etc.
Ken
At 08:41 PM 2000/01/12 -0500, George Woltman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>At 03:48 PM 1/12/00 EST, Ernst wrote:
>>>From a programming perspective, my own top "why 2K" question is this this:
>>>even given that the person(s) who first used a mere 2 characters to store
>>>the year had good reason (e.g. severely limited computer memory) to do so,
>>>why didn't they use those 2 precious bytes as a 2-byte integer?
>
>I think its due to punched cards. Reading and writing 2 digit dates on the
>punched card makes using PIC 99 COMPUTATIONAL inappropriate.
>
>Regards
>George
>
>P.S. Yes I'm old enough to have used punch cards.
>
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