Bob Bridges wrote about his history with keypunches. Mine started in 1965, when I was four. My dad was working on his first concordance, of Beowulf, and my mom was going to do the data entry of the text. (They'd met in the 50s when he was working for a CIA front doing translation and his typist quit. He told them, "I need a new typist, but don't give me anyone interesting", and when they brought her in, he thought, "Dammit, nobody listens to me around here!" Nine months later they were married.)
So I got to play with a keypunch at a very young age, and then again starting in 1975 when I sat in on my dad's PL/C class at the University. I have fond memories of playing outside with a bag of chad (please, not "chads"-it was a mass noun for 50 years; the 2000 election instantly made it a count noun, but we old-timers don't have to put up with that). (Jeez, even Office thinks it should be "chads". Kids today.) Bob, your musing about communications parameters sounds like full/half duplex. As for the cost of cards-I bought a few boxes on eBay about a decade ago. Even then folks were often selling individual cards for several dollars. I still have a bunch. My dad always had them in his breast pocket for note cards. He'd also always heard that they were the same size as old U.S. bills, but in the pre-Internet era had no easy way to verify that. Until one day in the late 80s, walking in lower Manhattan, he passed a numismatic store that had an old $1 bill taped to the inside of the window. He instantly whipped out a card and held it up, and sure 'nuff, it was the same size, modulo the clipped corner, of course! Keypunches persisted at University of Waterloo until the early 80s, not because the U was backward, but because ONE prof (not my dad!) insisted on using them. IIRC the I/O operators (remember them?) tried various stunts, like "accidentally" dropping his box of cards (only it wasn't really) in front of him and then stepping on them as they went to pick them up. They finally managed to get approval to tell him HE would have to pay for the maintenance. That cured it. Don't miss https://www.masswerk.at/keypunch/ ! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
