Let's Do The Timewarp Again!

The questions before the group this week included the following:
(and no fair looking it up the $@#%&@ book.)

1. Identify the common names of the 80-column and 96-column punchcards.

The 80-column card is, of course, the Hollerith card, and the 96-column
card is the "IBM card", though I have heard it called the Universal card
in some circles, for reasons I know not why.

The 1880 U.S. Census took too damn long.  The final results weren't
available until 1884.  Four years to do a census!  And since the census
was to be repeated in 1890, and Ellis Island was swarmed by an enormous
influx of immigrants, the government analysts of the day estimated that
the 1890 Census would take *twelve* years to complete.

Herman Hollerith proposed using punchcards to store census data.  The
Census Bureau went along with him, and the 1890 Census was completed in
only one year.

2. State the name of the 80-column card inventor's company.

Automatic Tabulating-Recording Company.  In the 1920s (1924?) it was
rechristened International Business Machines.


Jesse McKay
"System/36 And Beyond!"
jgm@nak.com

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