Sellam Ismail <dastar(a)ncal.verio.com> wrote:
Does anyone know what the function of an IBM 557
Alphabetic Interpreter
is/was?
Yeah, it "interprets" punched cards, meaning it reads the punches and
prints human-readable characters, probably across the 12-edge.
"Alphabetic" probably means "can do letters too" (in addition to
0-9).
I vaguely remember one that used to sit in the University
of Maryland College Park Computer Science Center dispatch room,
as I recall it would print sixty-mumble characters across the
the 12-edge and put the next eleventy-so off to the right
about where the 12-punches would be.
-Frank McConnell