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
>