They had 12 rows. The top two were called A and B, and were the only ones
that could use combinations of holes. The bottom 10 could only have one
hole per column ...

Cheers,

Alan

-----

At 6:13 AM -0800 5/8/00, Pennell, David wrote:
>They had more than 10 rows, but I don't remember exactly how
>many.  Each card would hold 80 characters.  The keypunch
>would print the characters along the top edge, but the ribbons
>were usually worn out.  Real programmers just read the holes -
>this definitely pre-dates reading "the matrix" directly...
>
>Bert - the second reference is even better, starting off with
>a slide rule.  I was in slide rule competition in high school,
>though never a serious contender.  I remember one of my first
>EE Professors challenging anyone to perform rectangular to
>polar coordinate transformations faster on a calculator than
>on he could on a sliderule.  Then the HP45 came out and that
>was the end of that.
>
>-david
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Bert Freudenberg [mailto:bert at isgnw.CS.Uni-Magdeburg.De]
>> Sent: Monday, May 08, 2000 9:57 AM
>> To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
>> Subject: [OT] Hacker poetry (was: Freshmeat for Squeak)
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 8 May 2000, Pennell, David wrote:
>>
>> > Nice poem - but I wonder how many of the young folks on the list
>> > know what "Face down, nine-edge first" means...
>>
>> Well, actually, I'm one of the "young folks" that didn't ever
>> hear that
>> phrase before. I guess it has to do with punching cards?
>> Because they had
>> 10 rows on it? And this is how to insert them?
>>
>> Here's another song using the same phrase:
>> http://thestarport.org/people/steve/Doc/Songs/oldtime.html
>>
>> -- Bert
>>