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Punch Card Discussion
- Thread starter Unforgiven
- Start date
*NOT members of the Borg collective 
Punch cards had that much info?
Off Topic
Punch cards had that much info?
Off Topic
That would be one 80 character line of code.*NOT members of the Borg collective
Punch cards had that much info?
Off Topic
How many words @Unforgiven?
depends on how many of the characters you dedicate as spaces or puncuation.
So Uhmm 2?
Preach
History;
Preach
History;
Punch Cards. Data input the hard way.
Punch Card discussion moved here.
Hundreds for this sentence. At least 15.
An 80-column card!
When I was in college in the '80s, I worked as a data entry operator--more accurately, keypunch operator--at a furniture store. We used 96-column cards--which are actually much smaller than their 80-column brethren--on Decision Data 9610 machines. The cards were used in IBM System/3 mainframes.
BTW, this is the job that led me off my medical school path, and into the wondrous world of programming and system administration on UNIX (SCO Xenix).
If you were a really good data entry operator, it wasn't hard at all. Before ever touching a keypunch machine, I'd worked for ≈2 years doing data entry on more modern systems, with screens and everything! I was extremely fast and accurate. I had no trouble switching to keypunch.
I took a couple of hours of data processing in high school in the late sixties. Being as everything about the input, storage, or processing was physical and easy to understand what was going on. We did no programming. We spent time at the keypunch, sorter, gang punch etc. Dinosaurs now but were fascinating at the time.
Those cards were everywhere.
They just threw them away.
So many data companies in Roxbury.
They just threw them away.
So many data companies in Roxbury.