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A Call For Humor!

I think punched tape came first:
I worked with both, manually punched cards in school ('76) and punched tape from a teletype writer in university ('79). The latter was frustrating: you wrote the program, delivered the punched tape to IT and 6 hours later you got the result - which often was an error message due to a forgotten semicolon or else.
 
I worked with both, manually punched cards in school ('76) and punched tape from a teletype writer in university ('79). The latter was frustrating: you wrote the program, delivered the punched tape to IT and 6 hours later you got the result - which often was an error message due to a forgotten semicolon or else.
I think punched tapes for teletype was before cards, but not sure.
(Sure, loom cards predate them all.)
I used punch tapes like that in HS with a teletype machine, around 1968, but those had been around a long time by then.
The weird thing is, I have no idea (some suspicions) what computer system that teletype connected to....
By '72, in college, it was all punch cards...with the same 'Later That Day' response time:)
 
Punched cards go back to Jacquard looms, before Babbage.

Yes, guess I was thinking more specifically of computer storage.

Also, does this count as a DAC? :)

1737590339253.png
 
Software patches for the earliest Digital Telephone Switches I had to work with came on punched tape.

1737589971138.png


Teletype Model 33
 
I think punched tapes for teletype was before cards, but not sure.
(Sure, loom cards predate them all.)
I used punch tapes like that in HS with a teletype machine, around 1968, but those had been around a long time by then.
The weird thing is, I have no idea (some suspicions) what computer system that teletype connected to....
By '72, in college, it was all punch cards...with the same 'Later That Day' response time:)
My mom told me about how, before I was born, the time she started to work with a newer computer and could no longer edit the program with Sellotape because the new tape reader was optical.
 
Quote:

Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in accounting. His invention of the punched card tabulating machine, patented in 1884, marks the beginning of the era of mechanized binary code and semiautomatic data processing systems, and his concept dominated that landscape for nearly a century.[1][2][3]

Hollerith founded a company that was amalgamated in 1911 with several other companies to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. In 1924, the company was renamed "International Business Machines" (IBM) and became one of the largest and most successful companies of the 20th century. Hollerith is regarded as one of the seminal figures in the development of data processing.[4]

Hollerith_Punched_Card.jpg
 
Quote:

The first practical pneumatic piano player, manufactured by the Aeolian Company and called the "Pianola",[3] was invented in 1896 by Edwin S. Votey, and came into widespread use in the 20th century. The name "pianola", sometimes used as a generic name for any player piano, came from this invention. The mechanism of this player piano was all-pneumatic: foot-operated bellows provided a vacuum to operate a pneumatic motor and drive the take-up spool, while each small inrush of air through a hole in the paper roll was amplified in two stages to sufficient strength to strike a note.[4]
 
Sorry had to...
Remember the tapes as it whose one of hobbies as a child, tho it didn't last for very long about two years. It's not how old are you after all if you where curious enough.
 
Quote:

Basile Bouchon developed the control of a loom by punched holes in paper tape in 1725. The design was improved by his assistant Jean-Baptiste Falcon and by Jacques Vaucanson.[6] Although these improvements controlled the patterns woven, they still required an assistant to operate the mechanism.

In 1804 Joseph Marie Jacquard demonstrated a mechanism to automate loom operation. A number of punched cards were linked into a chain of any length. Each card held the instructions for shedding (raising and lowering the warp) and selecting the shuttle for a single pass.[7]
 
Yes, guess I was thinking more specifically of computer storage.

Also, does this count as a DAC? :)

View attachment 423119
almost like PWM. :)
1737595942720.jpeg


OK, these are for music boxes, so not quite the same thing... but still pretty cool.
All y'all did know that Thorens started out making rather nice music boxes, ja? ;)
 

When we had to hand in our PL/1 assignment at uni there was a scramble for the few card punchers that would print the text at the top of the card (like in the picture above). Most didn't, and without that, if you ever dropped the card stack or got it out of order somehow, you were screwed and had to start over.
 
Can anyone give me an idea if we're going to be getting another 20 posts about punch cards or punch tape with no humor in them , so I can remove the thread from my favorites?

No guarantees, but it's possible. Four Yorkshiremen style escalations are by definition funny.
 
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