@@meldenslick You are a gentleman (assumed; if a lady-I apologize) and a scholar from my era. The 1620 was at the University of Texas at Arlington- a programming class in "scientific programming" inn FORTRAN. Also from the same era (at work) was IBM 1401 and IBM 7080 (General Dynamics- Ft. Worth, Texas) for parts inventory on US TFX experimental military bomber. Glad you are still kicking!
Thanks for uploading this :) I grew up with magnetic tape and floppy disks, and have had a hard time wrapping my head around how they did data processing with paper tape and punch cards - it's not really explained properly anywhere. But this film does a grand job at it, and really, a lot of what they describe isn't all that dissimilar to what we do with SQL in modern apps, with referential table lookups and comparing data back and forth between different sources
Hi @thesteelrodent1796, thank you very much for your feedback and insight on the video. What was surprising to me when first I found this film from 68 years ago was how complex the process was for businesses to handle all the different bits of data processing with such limited tools compared to what was developed in the next 10 years or so. Doing data processing with punch tape and punch cards seems quite tedious today, but many of the basics, like you say, are similar to what is done today, with our more modern tools. And these folks (in the film) surely felt they were quite advanced in their tools. Fascinating... thanks again~ Victor, CHAP
Back in the 70s, I used to maintain Teletype equipment. While I had training on the models 15 & 19 mentioned in this video, I never had occasion to work on them. I worked on the later models 28, 32, 33 and 35 Teletypes. Typing reperferators were mentioned in a couple of places. These received Teletype signals and both printed on and punched a tape. However, instead of cleanly punching the holes, as was usually done, they partially punched the hole, leaving a flap of paper. This is so the printing could still be read after punching. The text was offset from the corresponding holes by a couple of inches. Later on, I also worked on punch card equipment and computers. Also, in the text at about 23:40, the company Teleregister was mentioned. I worked on one of their systems in the Toronto Stock Exchange. This system was used to transmit stock prices to brokers offices, where they'd be displayed on a big board. That equipment was older than I was! It was built with vacuum tubes and relays and used a magnetic drum for storage.
I operated 2 computers @ a NCR Data Center in 1973: NCR 510& 520. The 510 used punched paper tape for it programs. The computer only had 4K memory! Prior to that while @ High school in 1969 I sent one of the 1st "e-mails" to nearby SFU here in Canada using a Telex machine hooked to an acoustic modem via a telephone handset. Later during the late 1970s I worked @ a Visa Credit card center where I collated punched IBM cards which were sent back to customers as their statements.
as a present-day accountant, it is AMAZING how much of this is familiar to me. Except instead of teletypes from the 50s we use a mainframe from the 80s
@@haroldfarthington7492 honestly I'm not absolutely sure, since the machine itself is five blocks away at our IT building. But we refer to the whole system by it's model name so I always assumed it's probably real
When I was learning Business Data Processing at the local tech school not far from here, we were taught to keep as much information in a machine-readable format as demonstrated here. The advantage of punchcards is that they're also human readable. Requiring any human transcription or entry of information introduces delay and the possibility of errors. The very first computer programs I wrote were in IBM 360/370 Macro Assembly Language and entered with punchcards.
punch cards are human readable if you know how to read them ;) not all punchers wrote the data in human readable form; many of them just produces a bunch of holes that make sense to the machine, but has no reference to let a human read them easily
I didn't realize that there was so much dependence on paper tape back then. Yes, it was still around in about 1960 when I started servicing 33's and still in use around the early 1970's or so to wake up (boot) a minicomputer, but to a far lesser degree.
This 25-minute video takes 344,744,050 bytes of storage as an MP4 file. If we were to store that file on punch cards using only eight rows (one for each bit), it will take *4,309,300.625 punch cards.* Since each card is 0.007 inches thick, the stack of cards will be 30,165.1 inches high, *2,513.75 feet tall,* or 2,154.6 boxes of cards at 2,000 cards per box. 16,500 punch cards weigh 99 pounds, so this stack of 4,309,300.625 cards will be 25,855.8 pounds. A card reader reading at 600 cards per minute, will take 7,182.1 minutes or *119.7 hours* to read 4,309,300.625 punch cards. But instead of wasting four rows, let's use use all twelve rows of the card. Then we can store 120 bytes per card. This video will take *2,872,867 punch cards,* stacked 20,110 inches high, 1,675.8 feet tall, or 1,436.4 boxes. That's a lot of trees. And it will take *79.8 hours* to read them. The 2,872,867 punch cards will weigh 17,237.2 pounds.
Hi @RaymondHng, thank you very much for your feedback on the DP video! Yours is an amazing rendition of mathematical dexterity and insight! It is a great representation of how much space the older storage media required compared to today's methods. Truly fascinating!! Thank you. ~ Victor, CHAP
They would construct special rooms to house this equipment, with glass walls so customers could see how modern and efficient this outfit is. Millions of dollars worth of equipment, designed to save time and above all, paper. This could all be seen from the company lobby with tape reels, input punch cards, output punch cards. stacks of cards for what purpose ? Programs running on the reels. BIG paper savings due to not having to re-enter data already loaded up.
This is fascinating for what it says by analogy about current AI replacing the "clerical" jobs of our age, and how primitively we understand where it will go and what forms it will take.
I believe it. Many computer schools were still teaching IBM punch card technology in the 1990's. Am guessing they stopped by now, but probably somewhere one can find one.... It was a good way to learn the basics of early programming, back in the day.
When I started high school, in 1967, key punching was one of the courses in the Business & Commerce stream. I was in Science, Technology & Trades, so I couldn't take it, even if I wanted to. Same with typing and stenography, all common office skills back then.
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Back in elementary school, we didn't know exactly what a puncher actually did. Then it took another 30 years before I made my first attempts at programming on my home computer.
Hi @rebokfleetfoot, and we all felt bad for the student who dropped his card deck on the floor, just before loading it into the card reader hopper.... : )
I took Fortran in grade 12. We didn't even have punch cards. We used pencil cards, which the teacher would take to the board office. We were successful if it compiled. I don't recall our "programs" ever being run though.
I didn't work with punch cards, but the mother of one of my friends did, so they had a plenty of them at home, and he shared some with me (Soviet punch cards were exact copies of the IBM ones). I liked them because they were made of high quality paper, which was very good for making flying paper aircraft half-models :-) I still have a couple of them. BTW if you want to know how Google would look like back in 60s, search for "google60" and click on the first result. This site also has many other cool stuff, like GoogleBBS (before internet, in mid-90s I dialed up many BBSs) and emulator of the first computer game - Star Wars.
Excellent- brings back old memories. Started on IBM 1620 with punched card input and output in 1958.
hi - my first computer was a 1620. it was keeping attendance for high school in 1974 :D
@@meldenslick You are a gentleman (assumed; if a lady-I apologize) and a scholar from my era. The 1620 was at the University of Texas at Arlington- a programming class in "scientific programming" inn FORTRAN. Also from the same era (at work) was IBM 1401 and IBM 7080 (General Dynamics- Ft. Worth, Texas) for parts inventory on US TFX experimental military bomber. Glad you are still kicking!
Thank you once again for this look back at data processing history!!
Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you for the feedback! ~ VK
I love the design aesthetic of these machines.
Thanks for uploading this :) I grew up with magnetic tape and floppy disks, and have had a hard time wrapping my head around how they did data processing with paper tape and punch cards - it's not really explained properly anywhere. But this film does a grand job at it, and really, a lot of what they describe isn't all that dissimilar to what we do with SQL in modern apps, with referential table lookups and comparing data back and forth between different sources
Hi @thesteelrodent1796, thank you very much for your feedback and insight on the video. What was surprising to me when first I found this film from 68 years ago was how complex the process was for businesses to handle all the different bits of data processing with such limited tools compared to what was developed in the next 10 years or so. Doing data processing with punch tape and punch cards seems quite tedious today, but many of the basics, like you say, are similar to what is done today, with our more modern tools. And these folks (in the film) surely felt they were quite advanced in their tools. Fascinating... thanks again~ Victor, CHAP
Back in the 70s, I used to maintain Teletype equipment. While I had training on the models 15 & 19 mentioned in this video, I never had occasion to work on them. I worked on the later models 28, 32, 33 and 35 Teletypes. Typing reperferators were mentioned in a couple of places. These received Teletype signals and both printed on and punched a tape. However, instead of cleanly punching the holes, as was usually done, they partially punched the hole, leaving a flap of paper. This is so the printing could still be read after punching. The text was offset from the corresponding holes by a couple of inches. Later on, I also worked on punch card equipment and computers. Also, in the text at about 23:40, the company Teleregister was mentioned. I worked on one of their systems in the Toronto Stock Exchange. This system was used to transmit stock prices to brokers offices, where they'd be displayed on a big board. That equipment was older than I was! It was built with vacuum tubes and relays and used a magnetic drum for storage.
Is that what is going on with the tape at 12:46? I can see the flaps of paper there, originally I thought that must have been a defect.
@@video99couk Yep. It's often called chadless, as it doesn't produce the chad normally produced. If you get chad, you need a bin to collect the chad.
I operated 2 computers @ a NCR Data Center in 1973: NCR 510& 520. The 510 used punched paper tape for it programs. The computer only had 4K memory! Prior to that while @ High school in 1969 I sent one of the 1st "e-mails" to nearby SFU here in Canada using a Telex machine hooked to an acoustic modem via a telephone handset. Later during the late 1970s I worked @ a Visa Credit card center where I collated punched IBM cards which were sent back to customers as their statements.
my old man was a programmer in the Hawthorn CA NCR Data center from 65-85 I remember some of the old NCR gear piled up in the back of the center
as a present-day accountant, it is AMAZING how much of this is familiar to me. Except instead of teletypes from the 50s we use a mainframe from the 80s
Very cool that you recognize much of this. Some real vintage equipment here. ~
A mainframe from the 80s? Is it simply emulated or is it the real deal?
@@haroldfarthington7492 honestly I'm not absolutely sure, since the machine itself is five blocks away at our IT building. But we refer to the whole system by it's model name so I always assumed it's probably real
When I was learning Business Data Processing at the local tech school not far from here, we were taught to keep as much information in a machine-readable format as demonstrated here.
The advantage of punchcards is that they're also human readable.
Requiring any human transcription or entry of information introduces delay and the possibility of errors.
The very first computer programs I wrote were in IBM 360/370 Macro Assembly Language and entered with punchcards.
punch cards are human readable if you know how to read them ;) not all punchers wrote the data in human readable form; many of them just produces a bunch of holes that make sense to the machine, but has no reference to let a human read them easily
@@thesteelrodent1796 Most punchcards I ever saw had the ASCII or more often EBCDIC equivalent of the punch printed along the top of the card.
I didn't realize that there was so much dependence on paper tape back then. Yes, it was still around in about 1960 when I started servicing 33's and still in use around the early 1970's or so to wake up (boot) a minicomputer, but to a far lesser degree.
This 25-minute video takes 344,744,050 bytes of storage as an MP4 file. If we were to store that file on punch cards using only eight rows (one for each bit), it will take *4,309,300.625 punch cards.* Since each card is 0.007 inches thick, the stack of cards will be 30,165.1 inches high, *2,513.75 feet tall,* or 2,154.6 boxes of cards at 2,000 cards per box. 16,500 punch cards weigh 99 pounds, so this stack of 4,309,300.625 cards will be 25,855.8 pounds. A card reader reading at 600 cards per minute, will take 7,182.1 minutes or *119.7 hours* to read 4,309,300.625 punch cards.
But instead of wasting four rows, let's use use all twelve rows of the card. Then we can store 120 bytes per card. This video will take *2,872,867 punch cards,* stacked 20,110 inches high, 1,675.8 feet tall, or 1,436.4 boxes. That's a lot of trees. And it will take *79.8 hours* to read them. The 2,872,867 punch cards will weigh 17,237.2 pounds.
Hi @RaymondHng, thank you very much for your feedback on the DP video! Yours is an amazing rendition of mathematical dexterity and insight! It is a great representation of how much space the older storage media required compared to today's methods. Truly fascinating!! Thank you. ~ Victor, CHAP
Thank you for giving us a look at these wonderful machines. That was fascinating.
they were mechanical wonders, even today when you see a modern mainframe spitting out tax bills, it's like, how on earth does that not jam up?
They would construct special rooms to house this equipment, with glass walls so customers could see how modern and efficient this outfit is. Millions of dollars worth of equipment, designed to save time and above all, paper. This could all be seen from the company lobby with tape reels, input punch cards, output punch cards. stacks of cards for what purpose ? Programs running on the reels. BIG paper savings due to not having to re-enter data already loaded up.
This is fascinating for what it says by analogy about current AI replacing the "clerical" jobs of our age, and how primitively we understand where it will go and what forms it will take.
In our school in 1956 we were told that the job of a puncher had a great future.
I believe it. Many computer schools were still teaching IBM punch card technology in the 1990's. Am guessing they stopped by now, but probably somewhere one can find one.... It was a good way to learn the basics of early programming, back in the day.
When I started high school, in 1967, key punching was one of the courses in the Business & Commerce stream. I was in Science, Technology & Trades, so I couldn't take it, even if I wanted to. Same with typing and stenography, all common office skills back then.
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Back in elementary school, we didn't know exactly what a puncher actually did. Then it took another 30 years before I made my first attempts at programming on my home computer.
@@James_Knott Interesting story. I had to learn shorthand for a year, but I never needed it and I've long since forgotten it. ;)
I vaguely recall “keypunch operator” filling acres of Help Wanted.
Paper tape. sounds so quaint now, but it was everywhere.
gosh, i'm that old? i recall feeding my program into a punch card machine, only to have it come back a day later with a syntax error :)
Yes, you are. So am I and so did I.
Hi @rebokfleetfoot, and we all felt bad for the student who dropped his card deck on the floor, just before loading it into the card reader hopper.... : )
I took Fortran in grade 12. We didn't even have punch cards. We used pencil cards, which the teacher would take to the board office. We were successful if it compiled. I don't recall our "programs" ever being run though.
That sounds…so incredibly painful
I didn't work with punch cards, but the mother of one of my friends did, so they had a plenty of them at home, and he shared some with me (Soviet punch cards were exact copies of the IBM ones). I liked them because they were made of high quality paper, which was very good for making flying paper aircraft half-models :-) I still have a couple of them. BTW if you want to know how Google would look like back in 60s, search for "google60" and click on the first result. This site also has many other cool stuff, like GoogleBBS (before internet, in mid-90s I dialed up many BBSs) and emulator of the first computer game - Star Wars.
That was very interesting!💙
Hi @captainkeyboard1007, Glad you enjoyed it! ~ VK
SEND ME TO THE TABULATING DEPARTMENT STAT!
Paper tape drive with a takeup reel? What sorcery is this?
Yes, magic of a sort. Wonder where all these paper tape reels are today? Did they ever make it to a "ticker-tape" parade?
You could call this video Beauty and the Beast 🤔😉
Is UNIVAC a large computer or is it a vacuum cleaner you can use the world over
Hi @SusanAmberBruce, I think you are right on both counts! : )
At the time this was made, Bill Gates would have been a baby! 🙂
Ha, Ha, yes, He would have been 1 year old. : )