[GreenKeys] OT: New coffee-table book on punched cards

[Doug Alderdice]

I've seen pictures of those card punches but have never come across one 
in real life.

Wow, that would be a tedious way of preparing a job!  A couple of times 
some friends and I went to the one state college campus that was near 
one of the friend's homes to use the key punches there to get ahead on 
what we were working on at school, but as I recall the college machines 
didn't print on the cards, so you had to make sure you were typing 
correctly, so we didn't do that too often.  The 029s we had at school 
printed.

Doug, KA2WFT

On 2/12/2020 12:41 PM, Ken Wiebe wrote:
> Long-lost device?
> 
> When I was in high school (as some others have related) - I had the opportunity to program the school district IBM 360 by submitting punched-card Fortran programs ("jobs").  I punched the cards myself on a portable hand-operated punch.
> 
> Over the years I have monitored ebay and the web looking for the portable punch but come up empty.
> 
> The punch was about the length and width of a modern full-sized keyboard, maybe a little bigger.  You stuck the card to be punched into a guide at one end.  In the center of the punch stood the control mechanism about 8-10 in. high, which had a dial to select the character to be punched, and a large lever to be depressed when ready to punch a column.  As the card passed under the control mechanism, holes were punched into the card according to the dial setting.  The card would advance to the next column automatically as part of the punch process.
> 
> I can't remember if the punch also printed characters at the top of the card - I'm thinking it did but not certain.
> 
> It was quite a chore to punch even a small program.  But fun, and rewarding if the program ran!  (it would take a week or so to find out, hehe)
> 
> Anyone ever run across one of these punches?
> 
> -Ken
> Tacoma, WA
>