Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a544
From: a544@mindlink.UUCP (Rick McCormack)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
Subject: Re: where did 132 (characters) come from?
Message-ID: <4208@mindlink.UUCP>
Date: 21 Dec 90 15:10:45 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Lines: 19

John DeRosa, uunet!motcid!derosaj, in an article writes:

> BTW, where did 132 come from?  Looks like a number that
> someone pulled from mid-air like 5280 feet in a mile or 2.5
> inches in a British Nail (gawd, I love the CRC).

in text based systems, using mono-spaced text, and the standard (Ha-ha) eight
inch wide paper of the teletype, there were 80 characters in a standard
10-pitch line; 96 in a 12-pitch line.  (these were known as pica and elite,
respectively.) Compressed type was printed at 16.5 characters per inch.
Voila!!

16.5(cpi) X 8(inches per line) = 132 characters per line.
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