Re: Old hand punches? (Was Microsoft tries...)

["James H H Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Only a couple years ago I cought my dad with one at the kitchen table
> punching away, one column at a time. Turns out the organ that mom played
> at their church used punched cards to indicate combinations of stops.
> The old ones were pretty shot due to all the handling (probably since
> mom was always putting on hand lotion) and he was making new cards!  The
> organ company no longer had a way to do them.  Dad still had cards
> laying around from his years of fixing 'gray wrinkle'.

If they were Hollerith cards (but definitely not Hollerith code), and the
instrument in question was an early-digital Allen, then they were
condensed-down-to-the-bare-bones, not-even-a-full-cycle samples for the
"Alterable Voices" feature.

I've heard of organs that stored piston settings on punched cards, but
I've never heard of one that used Hollerith cards. From the way my
pen-pals on the PIPORG-L list described them, they were more like the
Votamatic cards that were so controversial in Florida, not quite four
years ago.

--
JHHL