31 Jul
2002
31 Jul
'02
4:18 a.m.
Nick Gessler wrote:
Although IBM cards were 80 columns wide, the last
eight columns were
reserved for a sequence number in case the deck was dropped. The deck
could then be put back in order with a card sorter. That left 72
columns for code and/or data...
The last 8 colums were only used for sequence numbers by convention and
then normally only for program source code, a use of cards which came
very late in their history. They were not reserved and many applications
used all 80 columns for data.
-- hbp