Programming on metal cylinders?

[John Foust]

I was assisting an older client the other day, a former Yale prof,
and he's been programming since the late 1950s.  

He knew people who worked at Bletchley Park.  He also mentioned he
knew people who had manually scribed their programs on some sort of metal
cylinder.  Which computer system was that?

Part of what he'd like me to help with is a circa 2001 Compaq / DIGITAL
version of a FORTRAN programming environment.  He had not yet found
the installation media so we could try to get it running on Windows 10.
I wonder if it will...

- John