Reading ancient paper digital media (was Re: Hamurabi Focal source)

[Fred Cisin]

My father used to do a lot of consulting with CBS on Social Science
Research.  IBM was an active participant; sometimes TOO active.  IBM did
the entire computer work for the CBS "National Driver's Test" (1965?).
When the live percentages didn't add up to 100%, on the TV, I could see my
father sitting behind Walter Cronkite, frantically recomputing the numbers
in time for Cronkite to read them.  The next morning, my father, my
brother, and I began studying FORTRAN.


For one of the CBS studies, they actually distributed port-a-punch
("Hanging Chad") cards, and had the respondents drop them in a mailbox!
IBM did "something" with one of their card readers (slow-down?, enlarge
the in-gate?) and successfully read almost all of the cards!  I wish that
I could have seen that!




--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com