~Vinatge Computing . . punch cards
with reference to the GERALD FERGUSON SHOW. esp the off-ochre coloring of the backgrounds and the patterning, or NOT !!
before computers became ‘personal’ . . let alone hand-held !! right up through the 70s – punch cards, like the vintage one below – were the key to entering & working data. i.e. computing.
stacks of these manilla-colored ‘IBM’ or ‘Hollerith’ cards, measuring 7-1/4 x 3-1/4 in. and approx. 2 sheets of typing paper thick – were the early ‘computer programs’.
each card had roughly 80 bytes of capacity. computer nerds walked around with boxes of the things, carefully labelled across the top – in case they fell out of order.
today, state-of-the-art hard drives, (selling for under $100 !!) handle 2 terabytes of info. a terabyte is “2 to the 40th power” or approximately one thousand (1,000) billion bytes !! or 1,000 gigabytes.
that would be a stack of punch cards – longer than the distance from New York to Los Angeles.
p.s. thanks to TEKSERVE for help – with the math. and the history !!
