Jill, >I'm a programmer, and I'm older than most >programmers. I'm old enough to remember >punched paper tape ... but not quite old >enough to remember punched cards.
Don't feel bad. My first job was for IBM helping them set up a production line for the 1401. This was a computer that had no vacuum tubes. All transistors. The plant manager was not happy because it was taking up valuable floor space that could have been used to build time clocks. After all this was IBM's real business not computers. It used punched cards however when the 360 came out and IBM switched to EBCDIC they changed the punch card encoding. The special characters changed to accommodate new characters like the not sign. The 024 keypunches had to be replaced. Be careful because even after the 360, other companies like Control Data continued to use the old BCD punch card encoding. Yes I worked with paper tape as well. I even worked on one machine that I would write programs on paper tape loops. You were very limited in what you could write. Branching was difficult. The first APL system that I worked on was the 5101. It was a predecessor of the PC (5150) It had an APL keyboard. They also offered Basic but the Basic was very limited. For example strings were limited to 18 characters. No bad for a $30,000+ machine. Carl
