31 Jul
2002
31 Jul
'02
6:57 a.m.
On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Doc Shipley wrote:
On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Sellam Ismail wrote:
Ah, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind that bills have shrunk in size
since the punch card was invented. I'm a product of the 1970s :)
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)
wrote:
I'm looking at an E-series bill (pre-'60) and although I haven't seen
a punchcard in a while, I think they're darn close. The physical dimensions of the punched cards were
chosen to match dollar
bills, so that the processing hardware could make use of existing
subassemblies. I don't know why that particular hole to hole spacing was
chosen, but that combined with the size of the cards resulted in 80
column.
Are you sure? A punch card is a bit larger than a dollar bill.