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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!ptsfa!ihnp4!cuae2!wucs1!wucs2!sw1e!uusgta
From: uusgta@sw1e.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: More 1130/1403 stuff
Message-ID: <483@sw1e.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Feb-87 11:58:10 EST
Article-I.D.: sw1e.483
Posted: Mon Feb 16 11:58:10 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Feb-87 18:58:01 EST
References: <2319@sunybcs.UUCP> <1596@kitty.UUCP>
Organization: Southwestern Bell Telco GHQ St. Louis, MO
Lines: 22
Keywords: early computers, trivia, humor
Summary: Portapunch stories anyone?

> 	At my college a favorite stunt was to punch cards with all rows
> and columns punched - leaving a Swiss cheese card with little mechanical
> strength - but undetectable when viewed from the outside of a deck.  (It
> was also neat to hear the sound of a 513 reproducer when duplicating these
> "cards".)

My first introduction to the IBM portapunch (a plastic device used to hold
perforated punchcards so you could, by hand, push out the holes with a stylus)
was when a desperate social sciences type came into my office asking for new
cards for this, this .. thing?! It turned out that what he really needed was
copies of one card & then to ad two punches, punches that a cardpunch could make Well I was pretty proud of myself, having been one of the last people on the
earth's face required to actually use the 029.  I grabbed his deck, loaded it
alternately with blank cards, hit dup, and the brushes popped out every
hole on that perforated card.  Talk about one mad grad student.  He didn't
even care that the technology was too old and useless for me to held responsible
for this action.


-- 
#			---Tom Adams---
# {bellcore,ihnp4}!sw1e!uusgta	St. Louis MO	314-235-4237
# Opinions expressed here are mine, not those of Southwestern Bell Telephone