My father used to do a lot of consulting with CBS on Social Science Research. IBM was an active participant; sometimes TOO active. IBM did the entire computer work for the CBS "National Driver's Test" (1965?). When the live percentages didn't add up to 100%, on the TV, I could see my father sitting behind Walter Cronkite, frantically recomputing the numbers in time for Cronkite to read them. The next morning, my father, my brother, and I began studying FORTRAN. For one of the CBS studies, they actually distributed port-a-punch ("Hanging Chad") cards, and had the respondents drop them in a mailbox! IBM did "something" with one of their card readers (slow-down?, enlarge the in-gate?) and successfully read almost all of the cards! I wish that I could have seen that! -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

I worked with cards and paper tape in both the US and UK between 1970 and 1980. 'Chad' normally referred to paper tape punchings on both teletypes and high speed punches. The receptacle into which they went was called a 'chad box'. You could tell new users because they would try to tip the contents into a paper bin. It blew everywhere and the static made it stick. We used an industrial vacuum with an earthed nozzle to empty the box and clear the chutes. As to punched cards I never heard the rectangular punchings referred to as 'chips' on either side of the Atlantic. Regards ? Rod Smallwood ? -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Al Kossow Sent: 01 April 2010 21:52 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: chips (was Re: Reading ancient paper digital media (was Re: HamurabiFocal source)) On 4/1/10 12:50 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: There is no such thing. They are called 'chips'. They went into a "chip bucket". The name is documented in the service and users manuals for punched card (NOT "punch card") devices. Repeating incorrect information is not helpful.

Al Kossow wrote: Regardless of what the documentation says, and what the "official" term is, my mother and her friends who worked as punch operators when I was a young boy always referred to them as "chads". I still have a couple of chad boxes my mother gave me when I was little. Peace... Sridhar

That would be the same IBM who refer to hard disks as dazdi's! Regards ? Rod Smallwood ? ?????ANSI X12 - EANCOM - TRADACOMS ? EDI Consulting Ltd ? Phone? 0118 971 4436 Email?? rodsmallwood at btconnect.com ? -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Al Kossow Sent: 05 April 2010 14:49 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: chips (was Re: Reading ancient paper digital media (wasRe: HamurabiFocal source)) On 4/5/10 1:07 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: I refer you, then, to most IBM punched card documentation on bitsavers. http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/cardProc/22-8485-3_operGuide_Sep56.pdf page 13, for example: "Chip Box Slightly to the right of the machine, as you look at it from the rear, is a removable box, which is the receptacle for the punching chips as they are cut out. This box can be easily removed, when necessary, by lifting a catch that locks it into position. The chip box should be removed and emptied daily."

On 5 Apr 2010 at 18:56, Tony Duell wrote: Part of going to work for a company of that era was learning the vocabulary for things you were already familiar with. CDC RMS = IBM DASD = most everyone else "disk". CDC "label" = IBM "VTOC", which end of a word was "bit 0", etc. --Chuck

On Mon, 5 Apr 2010, Al Kossow wrote: Just having Faux News and CNN using "chad" may be enough for us to want to use "chip". I shall continue to put quotes around it every time I refer to their "Hanging Chad".

Somebody might check some manuals for teletypes or paper-tape punches for the 'official term' used for the punch detritus from paper tape. TMR, the box on the side of the teletype paper tape punch was commonlny called the chad box. I wonder if "chad" had origins with teletypes and paper tape, an industry (telephone) separate from the punched card / data processing industry way back when, and in which different terminology developed.

Emptying a paper tape punch/teletype chad box into a cow-orkers briefcase was common over here ;-). A non-funny 'joke' is to empty it into the heater inlet of a cow-orker's car. It could cause a serious accident if said person turns on the blwer fan when drivign and get s 'snowstorm' in the car. And if a piece of chad ends up in his eye it could be very nasty. Surely both are anti-holes? -tony

Perhaps we should rename 'chips' and 'chad' as electrons :-) -tony

On Fri, 9 Apr 2010, Ben wrote: Now playing at Joe's Bar and Grill, "Fish and Electrons"! -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

I looked in charles j. sippl's computer dictionary and handbook, SAMS, May 1966 and there is no mention of "chip" but these explanations of "chad": chad - That piece of material removed in punching a hole in perforated tape. chadded - Pertaining to the punching of tape in which chad results. chadded tape - Perforated tape with the chad completely removed. chadless - A type of punching of paper tape in which each chad is left fastened by about a quarter of the circumference of the hole, at the leading edge. This mode of punching is useful where it is undesirable to destroy information written or printed on the punched tape, or it is undesirable to produce chads. Chadless-punched paper tape must be sensed by mechanical fingers, for the presence of chad in the tape would interfere with reliable electrical or photoelectric reading of the paper tape. chadless paper tape - A paper tape with the holes partially punched. It is commonly used in teletype operations.

As ASR33's were the terminal of choice (leastways on DEC they were) You might say in the US communications and data merged at that point. Teleprinters used five level Baudot code and Teletypes used ASCII. In fact as very junior engineer in the late 1960's whilst working at Harwell I designed and built a box to drive Creed M75 tele-printers(We had loads of them) from a serial ascii output on a PDP8. Great fun .. a shift register to clock in the serial data. A Karnaugh mapped diode matrix to change the codes shift register to go from parallel back to serial. It only worked because the Creed was faster than the TTY output from the PDP8. Integrated circuits used er none! Regards ? Rod Smallwood ? -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Brent Hilpert Sent: 05 April 2010 22:52 To: General at invalid.domain; Discussion at invalid.domain :On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: chips vs chad Somebody might check some manuals for teletypes or paper-tape punches for the 'official term' used for the punch detritus from paper tape. TMR, the box on the side of the teletype paper tape punch was commonlny called the chad box. I wonder if "chad" had origins with teletypes and paper tape, an industry (telephone) separate from the punched card / data processing industry way back when, and in which different terminology developed.

Rod Smallwood wrote: FWIW, I always called the little rectangles punched out of cards "chips" as did everyone I worked with in the early 60s in the US. You've reminded me of the fortunately rare freak of nature called a chip jam. In an IBM 1402 it was a sight to behold. I never really understood how they got started since the chip bucket in the 1402 was pretty huge. I've wondered if they started from the top down or vice versa. It would be an interesting experiment to try to repeat while recording a video, except that one would have to punch an awful lot of cards to get it to happen. I wish now I'd taken a picture of one. Of course it became less beautiful when you started cleaning it up. I do recall discussions of chad versus chadless paper tape, though I don't remember when. The difference was whether the round holes were fully punched out and discarded or left attached by a bit of a paper "hinge". Later, Charlie C.