h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I did at school for my Computer Studies GCE many moons ago.

Do you mean there's another way?

Damn!

yes, I've heard of some young radicals using punched paper tape

*faints*

I'm sure it will not catch on

I thought that was a hole punch..

*wonders if lil uses bubble memory*

Does an electronic knitting machine count? I've programmed one of those with punched cards.

I started to look into this for a guide entry (currently shelved) a couple of years ago. Ford's Towel gave me the following links, which may bring back a few memories:

http://www.kaibab.org/gc/bob/ibm1130.htm
http://ibm1130.org/

Making a machine do more than one task?!? It's the devil's work I tell ye!

*Runs down the street with a flaming torch to set fire to the punch cards*


Think I'll stick with a good old fashioned Babbage Difference Engine, even if it is made of Lego.
http://acarol.woz.org/

Now, back in the olden days, when I was but a slip of a lass, my first job was a computer operator on a state of the art ICL 1900 series mainframe computer. (Google it it's frightening)

There were non of these desk top thingies, Computers ran on yards and yards of punched tape, and discs were the size of dustbin lids.

We soon upgrades to an ICL 2904 which got rid of the paper tape and had fancy data input machines that went straight to the computer and we used punched cards for commands.

Funnily enough I was discussing this with my son the other day.

Kimmiebabe

Now, back in the olden days, when I was but a slip of a lass, my first job was a computer operator on a state of the art ICL 1900 series mainframe computer. (Google it it's frightening)

There were non of these desk top thingies, Computers ran on yards and yards of punched tape, and discs were the size of dustbin lids.

We soon upgraded to an ICL 2904 which got rid of the paper tape and had fancy data input machines that went straight to the computer and we used punched cards for commands.

Funnily enough I was discussing this with my son the other day.

Kimmiebabe

Sorry - server problems

I used to try and program stuff on my speccy when I was a wee nipper and was forever punching the damn thing when it inevitably crashed before I could save it. Never used a card though, punching the rubber keys was far more therapeutic.

for those that like the idea of playing on old "big iron" a few of links...

http://www.cray-cyber.org/
http://twenex.org/

twenex is really worth a try if only to try and use "mail manager", the worlds first proper email client (dates from the eary 70's)

As an Office Junior, I was once put on the "comp" to cover for holidays.. and I was given the clockcards to in put.. It fightened the living daylights out of me..but I managed it..

I am still not very comfortable with PC's to this day..

Oh horrors...yards and yards of punched tape to feed into the machine which gobbled it up (or spat it out) depending on its mood.
Don't use folded tape.
It was so noisy too.
If you timed it just right, you could push "Start" then dash off to make a quick and arrive back to find the machine pining "Ready" for you to start manually typing out customer's bank statements, which had been naffed up the day before by the cashiers.
Don't make a mistake though, or you'll have to start again, and you have to account for every blank statement

Oh and hurry up!!! Someone wants to reprogramme the machine (I think it was a TC500) so they can process some cheques and credits.

Ah, those were the days

*pinging "Ready"*

Oh and if you'd have told me then that in 30 years' time I'd have a computer at home which I would spend my leisure time on, to write entries for a website, I'd have laughed and laughed.

When I started w*rk I w*rked for a company who employed two deaf ladies in their punch card room - they were so good at it and fast because (naturally) the noise didn't bother them. Lovely ladies who really loved the fact that they could outdo everyone else

"yes, I've heard of some young radicals using punched paper tape"

I used to have to edit documents for spelling mistakes using paper tape on a teletype machine!

(This stuff: http://www.science.uva.nl/museum/papertape.html)

Type your document - it produces a paper tape copy...

Check for spelling mistakes on the written copy - feed your tape back into the machine, advance it through the machine until just before your spelling mistake (this creates a new tape) - re-type the word - advance the tape manually until you pass the original mistake - continue...

I could actually read paper tape at one stage!