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Thread: "Body Check List" card

  1. #11
    Senior Member cis6409's Avatar
    Join Date:  Jul 2011

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    Fascinating stuff, amazing to see how far technology has come!.. I can remember our school getting a computer with the big rectangular floppy discs and Microsoft dos.. but that punch card code system is whole different ball game!

    Shane
    only from the past can we choose the correct path for the future...

  2. #12
    Senior Member
    Join Date:  May 2011

    Location:  Northern NJ

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    In earlier computers the punch cards were the data, the program was a hard-wired board that you plugged into the computer. I remember seeing that at a large oil company and they used their computer to calculate "degree days" so they can predict which customers would need oil deliveries based on how much oil they had, they used, the size of their tank and the trend in the price of oil. In it's time it was ground breaking technology. Much of what we take for granted today did not exist or existed in primitive forms. There were no computer screens and computers did not talk to each other. The computer my company had had a whopping RAM memory of 64KB in core memory and that was a LOT! It taught you to be very compact and efficient in your coding. Getting back to the original theme of the OP, back when DMC was in existence commercial use of computers was just beginning to take hold. It often started in accounting and inventory control and punch cards were the medium. Here in New Jersey the New Jersey Turnpike was way ahead. When you went onto the Turnpike (a toll road) they handed you a punch card. When you got off they took that card, fed it into the reader and charged you the toll. On the card was the cost to go to each exit based on where you got on. If you lost the ticket you paid for the most expensive toll they had (so you learned not to lose the ticket!) That is where the terms "Do not fold.,bend, or spindle the ticket (punch card) came from.
    David Teitelbaum

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