On 2/24/2014 3:13 PM, Ann Sanfedele wrote:
As the story goes, it went " So chat size shall we make these? Someone
pulled out a dollar bill (in the late 40's?) and said "here - mkae it
this size (or something like that)
ann
Late 19th century - the original "Greenback" dollars. The 1890 census
was recorded on Hollerith cards. Wikipedia says Hollerith patented his
tabulating system in 1899.
Another interesting factoid is that a 1921 fire in the basement of the
Commerce building in Washington, DC destroyed much of the original data
from the 1890 census and there was an outcry that led to the creation of
the National Archives. Still, the Librarian of Congress refused to
accept the remaining original 1890 Census records and they were
destroyed by Act of Congress in 1933.
I wonder if having the data on punch cards contributed to the fire damage?
On 2/24/2014 10:19, John Mullan wrote:
Here's a bit of trivia. The original 80 column Hollerith card was the
same size as the dollar bill then in circulation. Since then the size
of the dollar bill was shrunk.
jm
-----Original Message----- From: Peter McIntosh
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 4:35 AM
To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List
Subject: Re: OT - The good old days (computer-wise)
On 24 February 2014 07:37, steve harley <[email protected]> wrote:
i found it by way of this amusing tool which executes google searches
by teletype:
<http://www.masswerk.at/google60/>
i didn't use punch cards much - at university i was lucky to plunge
directly into interactive CRT terminal use in 1978; on the side i had
a research assistantship with Arthur Swersey, a disarmingly
non-conformant biz school professor who wouldn't blink when i showed
up at his office in bare feet and cutoffs; one of my many tasks with
Prof. Swersey was to set up some SIMULA jobs to run on an IBM 360; i
think that, about 1981, was my only contact with punch cards, and it
felt pretty old-fashioned
This is great! I'm taking that link to work tomorrow to show the
"gun" web-devs what they missed. Along with my 96-column IBM punchcard
template, if I can find it. Makes a great coffee coaster...
I used 80-column punch cards on Burroughs machines from the late 70's
thru the mid-80's. The whole cold-start deck for b4xxx mainframes was
on cards. You dropped the (very large) deck on pain of death...
manual resorting was punishment.
Also used to boot a couple of their "mini" mainframes from cassette.
Ciao,
Pete Mac in Melbourne
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