In the Winter 2014 Classic Trains, pg 44, there is a photo of a station operator. In the background there is an IBM 029 keypunch (maybe a 129). The caption says the picture is form the early 1980s, which is quite late for the keypunch era; more were
replaced by key-disk machines by then.

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On Friday, February 6, 2015 at 9:28:53 PM UTC-5, [email protected] wrote:

In the Winter 2014 Classic Trains, pg 44, there is a photo of a station

operator. In the background there is an IBM 029 keypunch (maybe a 129). The caption says the picture is form the early 1980s, which is quite late for the keypunch era; more were
replaced by key-disk machines by then.

I was in grad school in the early 1980s and we were still using keypunch machines for some projects.

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From: [email protected]

On 2/7/15 1:28 PM, [email protected] wrote:

On Friday, February 6, 2015 at 9:28:53 PM UTC-5, [email protected] wrote:

In the Winter 2014 Classic Trains, pg 44, there is a photo of a station operator. In the background there is an IBM 029 keypunch (maybe a 129). The caption says the picture is form the early 1980s, which is quite late for the keypunch era; more were

replaced by key-disk machines by then.

I was in grad school in the early 1980s and we were still using keypunch

machines for some projects.


In 1984 Cambridge, MA replaced it's paper ballot system with punched cards (non-municipal elections) and equipment at Harvard was used for the counting. In
2004. In 1997 a new optical scanner system was first used for Municipal elections and then for the non-municipal elections as well - and that was the end of the punched card system.

The Mass Turnpike converted from punched cards to FastLane/EasyPass in 1998/1999.

I still have in my possession a card deck of an English to PigLatin translator written in Fortran by me in 1962!

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From: [email protected]

On 2/6/2015 6:28 PM, [email protected] wrote:

In the Winter 2014 Classic Trains, pg 44, there is a photo of a station

operator. In the background there is an IBM 029 keypunch (maybe a 129). The caption says the picture is form the early 1980s, which is quite late for the keypunch era; more were
replaced by key-disk machines by then.

When I took my first computer class at UCLA, about 1982, our first
programming assignment (a program to add two numbers in the PL/C
language) was on punch cards. At that time, they still sold cards in
vending machines in the computer labs, but they were clearly on the way
out.

That fist assignment was more to get the idea and experience, as part of
the class dealt with the history of computing. Subsequent programming
was done at online dumb terminals, being stored in mainframe disk drives.

Los Angeles County used punch cards for voting from sometime in the
early 1960s (or before) until after the "hanging chad" nonsense in 2000.
Now they use "ink-a-vote" which is basically a Scan-tron.


Cheers,

Dave

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From: [email protected]

Benjamin Kubelsky <[email protected]> writes:

When I took my first computer class at UCLA, about 1982, our first >programming assignment (a program to add two numbers in the PL/C
language) was on punch cards. At that time, they still sold cards in
vending machines in the computer labs, but they were clearly on the way
out.

PL/C! That was an interesting compiler; I once wrote a program, made a
typo, duplicated the card out to the typo, corrected it, and then forgot
to take the bad card out of the dek before I submitted it. PL/C rewrote
my entire program into something that ran error-free but did absolutely nothing.

My high school in the 1970's had an IBM 26 keypunch. You had to
backspace and overstrike on a 26 to get certain characters.


umar


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