IBM Punched Card Typography | Hacker News Reader

IBM Punched Card Typography

masswerk.at

146 pointsmasswerk10 comments

Very interesting article. Stepping back, you might wonder why the keypunch uses a metal plate to hold the character bitmaps rather than a ROM or something sensible. Remember that the 026 keypunch was introduced in 1949, so there wasn't really a convenient way to store bits. It's actually pretty clever to use bumps on a metal plate to drive the printing.

The other side of this is how they stored the mapping from keys to hole patterns, with each key punching 0 to 3 holes. This was also done mechanically. Each key moved a lever ("bail") with tabs, and the tabs trip contacts that cause the right holes to be punched. But in between is a bunch of relay-based logic to handle shifting for special characters, numeric keypad mode, and so forth.

If you want to try out a 026 keypunch yourself, go to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View CA when they are demoing the IBM 1401.

Don't forget the typography on the SS's IBM Hollerith punch cards, too. Scroll down, 2nd to last image. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ibm-and-quot-death-s-cal...

From this reference: "Solipsistic and dazzled by its own swirling universe of technical possibilities, IBM was self-gripped by a special amoral corporate mantra: if it can be done, it should be done. To the blind technocrat, the means were more important than the ends."

How much this sounds like Silicon Valley today.

If it can be done someone will eventually do it. Make sure you do it first, or your enemies/competitors will do it first.

It's really just a rational survival principle.

The point was that you should be be asking whether you should be doing something in the first place

While we're at it, I just discovered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anophthalmus_hitleri

Now a collectable for the potential "fan" ..

Not to mention https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopalpa_donaldtrumpi

Here's a whole list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organisms_named_after_...

Holocaust nostalgia? I'll pass. This Teleindicadores font achieves a similar effect, looks better, and it's in the public domain. I once converted it to a web font, and used it on my website for a few years. https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/teleindicadores-1

Nope. Typography was an excellent vessel for a history lesson here.

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