And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Friday, September 12, 2025
5 megabytes of computer data, in 1966, in the form of 62,500 punched cards, took 4 days to load.
5081 card - fit in shirt pocket - greatest note pad ever - until some idiot punched a bunch of holes in it. I used to read Hollerith code - a LONG time ago.
I always kinda liked that song. A bit disjointed (deliberately) but repeating "number 9... number 9... number 9..." over and over would lodge it in memory.
Knew civil engineers with boxes full of cards for bridge finite element analysis. Someone dropped on - cards spilled out all over the floor. Ouch. But the punch card chad was great for trashing dorm rooms - had enough resident electrostatic charge that enabled the to stick to almost anything. I spent my share of hours hunched over an 027 card punch.
As a student I had an night cleaning job at an IBM data processing center. The task was keeping the place absolutely pristine and dust free. The daytime staff seemed to have been bred by mothers who did not impose their will about keeping their rooms clean and shipshape. Takeout food trash everywhere, ashtrays spilling over, and the toilets were a disgrace. Some people should never have been let loose in society until they had graduated from an armed services boot camp. Any how one night while the country's banking data was being transmitted on ever-revolving reel to reel tapes I noticed fluff inside one of these cabinets. I gingerly slid open the cabinet door to remove it. Big mistake, bozo-boy! The whole lot shut down with 'File protect' warning signs flashing everywhere. So I ran away. Next day I went to report to the cleaning company boss. Before I could start he told me I was fired. The reason was I had taped a note in the men's toilets saying "Don't drop your butts in the urinal and I won't piss in your ash trays! The Cleaner' He laughed and transferred me to a haute couture fashions showrooms. The girlfriend at the time loved to give me a hand.
The prevailing belief was that engineers & business majors had to learn programming until the advent of the PC & floppy discs. There only D ever received in Undergrad Finance was in Computer Programming. You had to reserve a 30 min. block on 1 of the 4 terminals, which was a pain.
Went to another school for my MBA (mid-70s), and they didn't give a rat's a** about programming. Thank Gawd.
So grateful this Grandfather only had to deal with 5.25-inch floppies with my computer work. Although I did briefly have a Tandy home pc that used a tape drive to load a simple pong style game in an hour or so.
From room sized computers that are replaceable by a smartphone to power hungry AI centers bigger than warehouses. Odd world most of us lived through.
Did the Chad and tape punch spray into a few rooms as an undergrad. The gray tape dots would make the room look like some alien space. BTW, those card piles would feed in less than four hours, not days. I'll always remember the sound of the reader as it spooled up to suck the load thru. Also job sep cards, and the first three or four jcl cards.
My high school had an IBM 1130. One of my friends acquired his nickname on the first assignment of the year involving punch cards - write a FORTRAN program that will print out your name and address. He mangled the assignment so badly, his nickname became what the printer spat out.
Then in college (yes, engineering of the chemical variety) I recall an incident about 3 AM in Hill Center feeding IBM 360s where someone dropped his deck of cards - not quite a full box but close. I am sure that guy considered a variety of life options in that moment.
Give me a three-finger keypunch and I bet you my memories will take over in milliseconds.......
ReplyDeleteFortran and punch cards caused me to drop out of engineer major in college.
ReplyDeleteAlmost the same for me, I started numbering the cards in pencil after one card got out of sequence and it took me hours to figure that out.
DeleteWhen did you figure out that writing on cards with pencil was a problem?
DeleteBeing lazy, and not wanting to punch sequence numbers in the programs, I used to draw a diagonal line across the top of the deck.
Delete"draw a diagonal line across the top of the deck" -- This Is The Way.
DeleteSeriously, I could have done that stack in just one day, given enough coffee.
What a mess that floor sort would make.
ReplyDeleteYes, she is thinking "nobody sneeze, or so much as breath hard"
Delete5081 card - fit in shirt pocket - greatest note pad ever - until some idiot punched a bunch of holes in it. I used to read Hollerith code - a LONG time ago.
ReplyDeleteJDK
I still can. It's amazing what sticks.
Delete1001 1001 1001 1001
ReplyDeleteI always kinda liked that song. A bit disjointed (deliberately) but repeating "number 9... number 9... number 9..." over and over would lodge it in memory.
DeleteAnd don't forget they have to be loaded in sequence
ReplyDeleteKnew civil engineers with boxes full of cards for bridge finite element analysis. Someone dropped on - cards spilled out all over the floor. Ouch. But the punch card chad was great for trashing dorm rooms - had enough resident electrostatic charge that enabled the to stick to almost anything. I spent my share of hours hunched over an 027 card punch.
ReplyDeleteWe would load large paper cups with chad and an M-80 and toss it off the engineering building, Boelter Hall.
DeleteAt the end of life on punch cards is where I entered the IT world. I was a perf/re-perf specialist with paper tape.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, paper tape, I forgot. And a room full of chad when I ran the tape, too.
DeleteThe longest Fortran program I ever wrote was maybe 100 cards.
ReplyDeleteAs a student I had an night cleaning job at an IBM data processing center. The task was keeping the place absolutely pristine and dust free. The daytime staff seemed to have been bred by mothers who did not impose their will about keeping their rooms clean and shipshape. Takeout food trash everywhere, ashtrays spilling over, and the toilets were a disgrace. Some people should never have been let loose in society until they had graduated from an armed services boot camp.
ReplyDeleteAny how one night while the country's banking data was being transmitted on ever-revolving reel to reel tapes I noticed fluff inside one of these cabinets. I gingerly slid open the cabinet door to remove it. Big mistake, bozo-boy! The whole lot shut down with 'File protect' warning signs flashing everywhere. So I ran away.
Next day I went to report to the cleaning company boss. Before I could start he told me I was fired. The reason was I had taped a note in the men's toilets saying
"Don't drop your butts in the urinal and I won't piss in your ash trays! The Cleaner'
He laughed and transferred me to a haute couture fashions showrooms. The girlfriend at the time loved to give me a hand.
I remember Hollerith cards quit well. Too well.
ReplyDeleteTiny factoid, from an old bit fidler (me): the original crt computer display was 80 by 25 characters, to match the format of a punch card.
ReplyDeleteWe'd stack the cards in order, then draw an X in the long side edges of the bundle. Quite simple to notice something out of place later.
ReplyDeleteThe prevailing belief was that engineers & business majors had to learn programming until the advent of the PC & floppy discs. There only D ever received in Undergrad Finance was in Computer Programming. You had to reserve a 30 min. block on 1 of the 4 terminals, which was a pain.
ReplyDeleteWent to another school for my MBA (mid-70s), and they didn't give a rat's a** about programming. Thank Gawd.
So grateful this Grandfather only had to deal with 5.25-inch floppies with my computer work. Although I did briefly have a Tandy home pc that used a tape drive to load a simple pong style game in an hour or so.
ReplyDeleteFrom room sized computers that are replaceable by a smartphone to power hungry AI centers bigger than warehouses. Odd world most of us lived through.
Did the Chad and tape punch spray into a few rooms as an undergrad. The gray tape dots would make the room look like some alien space. BTW, those card piles would feed in less than four hours, not days. I'll always remember the sound of the reader as it spooled up to suck the load thru. Also job sep cards, and the first three or four jcl cards.
ReplyDeleteMy high school had an IBM 1130. One of my friends acquired his nickname on the first assignment of the year involving punch cards - write a FORTRAN program that will print out your name and address. He mangled the assignment so badly, his nickname became what the printer spat out.
ReplyDeleteThen in college (yes, engineering of the chemical variety) I recall an incident about 3 AM in Hill Center feeding IBM 360s where someone dropped his deck of cards - not quite a full box but close. I am sure that guy considered a variety of life options in that moment.