[GreenKeys] Flexowriters available

[Jim Haynes]

Teletype also dabbled in the edge-punched card product, or "unit record"
as it was called at the time.  It was an attempt to meet the same market
need that was met by an IBM product.  It was doomed to go nowhere because
IBM had the ability with its punched card line to mass-reproduce and
machine-sort their style of cards.

The application was something like parts ordering, where there were large
files of punched cards containing the ordering description.  Clerks would
pull a card for each part to be ordered, put the card through a reader,
and enter variable information such as quantity ordered from a typewriter
keyboard.  The output was a punched tape which could be transmitted
to a distant computer center.

The edge-punched cards could only be created and read a character at a
time, so you couldn't use a card reproducer to produce the files of cards
to be sent to each place where parts were ordered.

The one IBM installation of this type that I saw involved probably half
a million cards.