chips vs chad

[Roger Holmes]

> 
> From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
> 
>> I wonder if "chad" had origins with teletypes and paper tape, an
>> industry (telephone) separate from the punched card / data processing
>> industry way back when, and in which different terminology developed.
> 
> Dunno, but either was fun to hide in a friend's drawer or light 
> fixture.  Paper tape punches were far nastier than the ones from 
> punched cards.

Why nastier? The card ones are thicker (7 thou) and have sharp square corners. I think the first time I heard about them (in the UK) the card ones were called chads. It in a warning from our lecturer not to use them as confetti as he knew of a case of them getting into the bride's eye and she spent the next few hours in hospital because of them.

I think the holes were oblong so that the sideways on (row at a time) brushes of old IBM equipment could get through them easier. I don't think brushes would be able to read them a column at a time.

By the way, I have some 80 column cards punched with round holes, two holes for each oblong one, and they were described as 160 column cards.

Roger Holmes