10 Feb
2011
10 Feb
'11
4:08 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
On Thu, 10 Feb 2011, Richard Hadsell wrote:
That's the chronological order, and of course the forms were for
80-column cards. But why did the terminals, which replaced cards, have
to be 80 columns and, more coincidental, the same number of lines as on
a coding sheet? There was never any way to transfer from forms to the
terminal, other than by hand.
My best guess was only that IBM also printed forms for designing what
you wanted to display on the terminal, and they could use exactly the
same forms as for FORTRAN, with just some relabeling. That seems lame,
but there it was.
--
Dick Hadsell 203-992-6320 Fax: 203-992-6001
Reply-to: hadsell at blueskystudios.com
Blue Sky Studios http://www.blueskystudios.com
1 American Lane, Greenwich, CT 06831-2560
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.