Reading ancient paper digital media (was Re: Hamurabi Focal source)

________________________________________ From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire [mcguire at neurotica.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 9:58 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Reading ancient paper digital media (was Re: Hamurabi Focal source) On Apr 1, 2010, at 12:54 AM, Fred Cisin wrote: Ahhhhhh I see. Can they re-feed, or would that be the operator's responsibility? (I've never used a real IBM card reader) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL ------------------------ And here's where engineering meets theory. As I've read this thread, I can grok the very clever solution of knowing how the card is moving through the mechanism to compensate for the fact that we don't have data on the card that tells us how fast it's moving through the mechanism, as we have with paper tape (i.e. a self-clocking solution). Interestingly, the idea of a timing mechanism hosted on the medium itself never occurred to Herman Hollerith or his successors, which I guess speaks to their confidence in their engineering. The solution obviously worked, as decades of computing happened based on the physical Hollerith card (as distinguished from its philosophical successors of fixed-length records represented on tape or disk). "What if" is the hallmark of a good engineer, but the bane of a marketing person. :-) But when the marketing people drive the process, engineers evidently rise to the occasion. <sigh> -- Ian