10 Feb
2011
10 Feb
'11
3:59 p.m.
On Thu, 10 Feb 2011, Richard Hadsell wrote:
Has anyone noticed that the size of IBM's coding
forms (24 lines x 80
columns) was the same as the size of their terminals (e.g., 3277)? Was
this coincidence or intentional?
Absolutely NOT coincidence.
First came the cards for data.
Those begat coding sheets for one person to write down the content, and
another to punch it onto cards.
Then came the languages (COBOL, FORTRAN, VALTREP?), many of which had
FIXED FORMATs, but based on 80 column cards
THSN came the terminals.