25 Aug
2005
25 Aug
'05
1:12 p.m.
On 8/25/05, Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote:
Remember punchcards?
Yep.
Does anyone read them these days?
Not me.
I'm just curious if anyone does, and if they do,
how they do it.
I started to write an app in C that could take a medium-res scan of a
punch card (from a fax scanner I have) and "OCR" it, but I kinda lost
interest after I got it as far as locating the edges of the card
within the scan image. I never wrote any code to look for holes.
For volume production, I think it's well worth maintaining a tabletop
card reader. They are somewhat rare, but once you have one working,
it's just as easy to read 2000 cards as to read 20.
-ethan