<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">@Nancy</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">My first classes were on the 80 column
Hollerith Code and I spent some time as System 38 operator and
programmer. I am making quite a nice retirement income on Drupal
sites now.</p>
<br clear="all">David A. Shaver <br>D. A. Shaver Web Design<br>Web Page Design for Small Business<br><a href="http://www.dashaver.com">www.dashaver.com</a> <br> <br>
<br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Oct 9, 2010 at 8:11 AM, nan wich <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:nan_wich@bellsouth.net">nan_wich@bellsouth.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div></div>
<div>Yes, I am close to "retirement age" and had my 61st birthday yesterday. I am not planning on retiring any time soon.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Yes, I did actually use punch cards. When I started in "Data Processing" there were no CRTs; electronically modified typewriters were state of the art. The few disk drives had platters that measured in feet with heads that were as big as your fist - oh, and held an incredible 5 mega bytes of data! And if you wanted your program to run fast, you wrote in assembler language because compilers (forget interpreted languages) produced pretty poor code.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>And you just filled in a mystery for me. Most computer languages only used the first 72 characters of the card, leaving the last 8 for a sequence number so you could put the cards into a mechanical sorter if you ever dropped them. I always wondered where the 72 came from.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Minor correction though: IBM's first CRT was the 2260, which had 12 lines of 40 characters. It was a big improvement when the 3270 came out with 24 lines of 80 characters. They later produced a version that would display up to 132 characters (printer width).</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Yes, I had a Vic-20 with it's casette tape storage. I quickly upgraded to the Commodore 64. Before the Vic-20, I used a Radio Shack TRS-80 to produce at-home banking.<br> </div><div class="im">
<p><font size="4" color="#ff007f" face="bookman old style, new york, times, serif"><i><b>Nancy</b></i></font></p>
<p><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.</font></p>
<div><br></div>
</div><div style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br><font size="2" face="Tahoma">
<div style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<hr size="1">
</div>
<div style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Earl Miles</div>
<div style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"></div></font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>On 10/8/2010 11:47 AM, nan wich wrote:<br>> @Gerhard: 80 lines was how long a punch card was. What a ridiculous<br>
> reason to use 80 any more. Are you even old enough to have ever seen a<br>> punch card? I almost forgot, the original IBM System/3 had punch cards<br><br>Yes, Nancy, there are actually a few adults on this list. Though I doubt<br>
many of us are old enough to have actually USED a punch card, since<br>people who did work on punch cards should be pretty close to retirement<br>age by now.<br><br>80 characters was the common width of monitors, which descended from<br>
punch cards, but is also pretty close to the 72 character width of the<br>common typewriter (pica, if I remember right) with standard margins. RFC<br>2822 imposed the limit (as a SHOULD not MUST) because many terminals<br>
failed to wrap on their own, and terminals often had 80 CPL in
order to<br>be standard. Though many terminals also had 132 or, if you were<br>unfortunate enough to use a VIC-20 (and maybe a PET, I forget) you could<br>get 40 CPL.<br><br>Also, RFC2822 is still in effect; if an email message is in text/plain,<br>
it is polite to go ahead and wrap at 78 per the spec. If your message is<br>text/html then wrapping is pointless.<br></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br>