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From: a544@mindlink.UUCP (Rick McCormack)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm
Subject: Re: where did 132 (characters) come from?
Message-ID: <4209@mindlink.UUCP>
Date: 22 Dec 90 00:31:41 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Lines: 34

in an article. Marc T. Kaufman, (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu) says:

> When 132 column printout originated, there were no
> "compressed" teletypes. 132 characters, at 10 characters per
> inch (pica spacing), is just under 13.2" wide.  This is
> (almost) the most printing that you can get on 14" wide
> tractor-feed paper... of the kind used in the IBM 1403
> printer.  Older, drum based 402 printers, could only print
> 120 characters across.  132 is also a multiple of 12, which
> just happens to be the bit-width of an IBM 704x or 709x data
> channel (this is useful for printers that are loaded by row,
> rather than by column).  132 is also 6 x 22.  Each 7090 word
> held 6 characters (6 bits per character).  132 character
> screen displays were invented specifically to be able to
> view an entire print line at once.

However, I checked back into the stuff I learned back in 1966 from the Canadian
Pacific Telecommunications  course I took.  In my original reply, I stated > 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!!
  I goofed.  According to my notes made at the time, the poaper width of which
I spoke was for TELEX, not TELETYPE.  The Telex machines we used in the field
offices used a compressed spacing between letters for the 132 characters per
line printing, yielding the 132 chars per line I mention.
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