Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
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Isaac was so out of it! We don't type anymore, we keyboard! That reminds me of a story. Don't worry, I won't tell it!
boB (Now which is the caps key?)
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Hey boB-
You look like a candidate for this...
Recently I reprogrammed my keyboard to eliminate my Cap Lock Key!
As a 10 finger typist I was always hitting that darn thing. Now I can hit it and nothing happens!
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Here is a bit of historical trivia...
We refer to the keys on our keyboard and typewriters 'uppercase' and 'lowercase'.
Early printing presses used movable type, which meant that each letter was cast on a separate piece of metal. The type pieces were then arranged in a tray called a composing stick, and the ink was applied to the type using a roller.
The type cases were typically made of wood and had several compartments for storing the different letters and symbols. The capital letters were stored in the upper case because they were used less frequently than the smaller letters. The lower case was closer to the compositor, so it was easier to reach the smaller letters that were used more often.
So the terms 'uppercase' and 'lowercase' come from the way that early printers stored their type (and before anyone used a computer or a typewriter). The capital letters were typically stored in the higher, or upper, case, while the smaller letters were stored in the lower case.
Don
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And those printers prayed that they didn't pi the type! Which means...
51Studebaker is obviously another man, like me, who enjoys the superpower of pumping printers ink rather than blood through his veins!
"When pi is used as a verb, it means to randomize, to jumble, to reduce to chaos, similar to the randomly non-repeating nature of pi's digits.
"'Pi the type' is a printer/typesetter's expression meaning to, say, take a form with all the type neatly arranged and ready for printing and then drop it on the floor, spilling the type so that characters are strewn all over, mixed up randomly."
That's from From Pain in the English, but I learned it at about age 8, watching my father set type for the weekly Silver City, New Mexico Enterprise, of which he was editor. I'd hang out in his office, fascinated with the hot metal "slugs" that dropped into a tray on the Linotype machine. I remember the quiet, almost musical sound of the teletype as it transformed commands from a mechanical keyboard into the slugs bearing phrases and sentences.
I also spent time with Emilio Carillo, the pressman, as he printed the Enterprise on an ancient flat-bed press. (I don't know how old that press was; perhaps it dated back to the first days of the Enterprise and the last days of the Apache chief Geronimo who had spent 25 years slaughtering Mexicans and Americans who were slaughtering Apaches. Some 5,000 American soldiers were assigned to the effort to recapture him after he escaped from detention. Silver City was an epicentre of the so-called Indian Wars. It had been founded by two men, Captain John Bullard and his brother, James, in 1870; less than a year later, Captain Bullard himself was killed in an attack by Apaches. The Enterprise offices were on Bullard Street, the "main drag" in Silver City.
Bob (I found the capital key! Capital!)
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Bob,
Sounds a bit like my old programming days on the mainframe when we used punch cards. They were carried in a box to the computer room and they had to be in order. Some of the programs were a couple thousand cards long and after a late night of punching them in sometimes folks would drop the box and scatter it everywhere in their hurry to get the job submitted. I guess the program was pi'd!
Allen
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@Allen,
Wow ... that brings back memories. From about 1978 to 1982 I worked for an electricity authority in Sydney Aust. as a Cobol programmer where I wrote programs that were keyed onto punched cards just like you described. I was responsible for the programs that billed 200,000 residents for their electricity. All the electricity meter reading records were keyed onto punch cards and fed in for the program to process, box by box. But, it worked.
Tim
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I recall dropping a set of punch cards and then having to sort them
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One of my jobs while working through school (around 1974) was as a night janitor at a large company. Along with cleaning lots of bathrooms, I was also tasked with emptying all the trash cans. Given the size of the building, these two simple tasks took the entire 8 hour midnight shift.
The building included a raised floor, environmentally controlled computer room (I bet you already know where this is going…) only accessed with special keys. I had already been admonished once about not removing any trash that might be sitting beside any trash can and I hate making a mistake twice. It was not uncommon for me to find empty punch card boxes next to the trash cans in the computer room and I had thrown them out numerous times before.
One day while sitting in class one morning, a university person came to the door and asked me to follow her back to her office. She handed me the phone and my boss was on the other end. He asked me if I had thrown away a box last night sitting next to the trash can in the computer room. I said yes and he told me that there had been about 20 punch cards in that ‘empty’ box and that the company was shut down until they could get them back. He inquired which dumpster I had thrown the box in and I described it to him. I offered to leave school and do the dumpster diving, but he told me to not worry, it was not my fault.
Later that day I found out they dumpster had already been picked up so the company had sent 5 people to search the landfill! Yikes! They eventually found the box and recovered the card and to their credit they never pushed back on me. But I did notice that there never were any more boxes to throw away in the computer room.
Don
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Good story Don. Those were interesting times.
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I never punched a punch card, but when my wife and I moved to Canada, I attempted to tell the Literary Guild that had a new address. Somehow it was decided in the Lit Guild bunker that I had absconded with a book but not paid for it. Canada has a long reputation for harbouring book thieves.)
I did indeed have the book, but I had paid for it, so I returned the bill that I had received along with a punch card that was enclosed in the envelope, presumably as "proof" of my indebtedness. I explained that I owed them nothing. Their response: To dun me again, and send another punch card. I returned it with another explanation, and received yet another! And then our dog, Shelley, a Shetland Sheepdog, came to my rescue.
Shelley, who was a good reader but didn't like the Literary Guild's titles (no books about dogs, at least no classic novels about dogs), had got hold of the latest punch card and proceeded to punch it a few more times with her sharp teeth, thoroughly moisten it with doggie saliva, wrinkle it badly, and even eat a corner of it. When it was dry and more or less flat, I returned it, but only after ignoring the warning not to fold, staple, or mutilate (further), along with a letter of abject apology, explaining once again that I owed them nothing, and finally got an response from a human admitting that they had made an error and … would I like to continue my membership? No.
Shelley was so supportive of my problem with the Literary Guild that she vowed never to read one of their book choices. And she didn't.
boB
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I did visit a newspaper when I was on Okinawa (early 70s) and saw all the molten lead in the composing room. The machine looked quite primitive.
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test
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09:16:57am
re: Test Message
Sorry, I didn't get it...
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Isaac was so out of it! We don't type anymore, we keyboard! That reminds me of a story. Don't worry, I won't tell it!
boB (Now which is the caps key?)
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re: Test Message
Hey boB-
You look like a candidate for this...
Recently I reprogrammed my keyboard to eliminate my Cap Lock Key!
As a 10 finger typist I was always hitting that darn thing. Now I can hit it and nothing happens!
Login to Like
this post
re: Test Message
Here is a bit of historical trivia...
We refer to the keys on our keyboard and typewriters 'uppercase' and 'lowercase'.
Early printing presses used movable type, which meant that each letter was cast on a separate piece of metal. The type pieces were then arranged in a tray called a composing stick, and the ink was applied to the type using a roller.
The type cases were typically made of wood and had several compartments for storing the different letters and symbols. The capital letters were stored in the upper case because they were used less frequently than the smaller letters. The lower case was closer to the compositor, so it was easier to reach the smaller letters that were used more often.
So the terms 'uppercase' and 'lowercase' come from the way that early printers stored their type (and before anyone used a computer or a typewriter). The capital letters were typically stored in the higher, or upper, case, while the smaller letters were stored in the lower case.
Don
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re: Test Message
And those printers prayed that they didn't pi the type! Which means...
51Studebaker is obviously another man, like me, who enjoys the superpower of pumping printers ink rather than blood through his veins!
"When pi is used as a verb, it means to randomize, to jumble, to reduce to chaos, similar to the randomly non-repeating nature of pi's digits.
"'Pi the type' is a printer/typesetter's expression meaning to, say, take a form with all the type neatly arranged and ready for printing and then drop it on the floor, spilling the type so that characters are strewn all over, mixed up randomly."
That's from From Pain in the English, but I learned it at about age 8, watching my father set type for the weekly Silver City, New Mexico Enterprise, of which he was editor. I'd hang out in his office, fascinated with the hot metal "slugs" that dropped into a tray on the Linotype machine. I remember the quiet, almost musical sound of the teletype as it transformed commands from a mechanical keyboard into the slugs bearing phrases and sentences.
I also spent time with Emilio Carillo, the pressman, as he printed the Enterprise on an ancient flat-bed press. (I don't know how old that press was; perhaps it dated back to the first days of the Enterprise and the last days of the Apache chief Geronimo who had spent 25 years slaughtering Mexicans and Americans who were slaughtering Apaches. Some 5,000 American soldiers were assigned to the effort to recapture him after he escaped from detention. Silver City was an epicentre of the so-called Indian Wars. It had been founded by two men, Captain John Bullard and his brother, James, in 1870; less than a year later, Captain Bullard himself was killed in an attack by Apaches. The Enterprise offices were on Bullard Street, the "main drag" in Silver City.
Bob (I found the capital key! Capital!)
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re: Test Message
Bob,
Sounds a bit like my old programming days on the mainframe when we used punch cards. They were carried in a box to the computer room and they had to be in order. Some of the programs were a couple thousand cards long and after a late night of punching them in sometimes folks would drop the box and scatter it everywhere in their hurry to get the job submitted. I guess the program was pi'd!
Allen
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re: Test Message
@Allen,
Wow ... that brings back memories. From about 1978 to 1982 I worked for an electricity authority in Sydney Aust. as a Cobol programmer where I wrote programs that were keyed onto punched cards just like you described. I was responsible for the programs that billed 200,000 residents for their electricity. All the electricity meter reading records were keyed onto punch cards and fed in for the program to process, box by box. But, it worked.
Tim
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re: Test Message
I recall dropping a set of punch cards and then having to sort them
1 Member
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Login to Like.
re: Test Message
One of my jobs while working through school (around 1974) was as a night janitor at a large company. Along with cleaning lots of bathrooms, I was also tasked with emptying all the trash cans. Given the size of the building, these two simple tasks took the entire 8 hour midnight shift.
The building included a raised floor, environmentally controlled computer room (I bet you already know where this is going…) only accessed with special keys. I had already been admonished once about not removing any trash that might be sitting beside any trash can and I hate making a mistake twice. It was not uncommon for me to find empty punch card boxes next to the trash cans in the computer room and I had thrown them out numerous times before.
One day while sitting in class one morning, a university person came to the door and asked me to follow her back to her office. She handed me the phone and my boss was on the other end. He asked me if I had thrown away a box last night sitting next to the trash can in the computer room. I said yes and he told me that there had been about 20 punch cards in that ‘empty’ box and that the company was shut down until they could get them back. He inquired which dumpster I had thrown the box in and I described it to him. I offered to leave school and do the dumpster diving, but he told me to not worry, it was not my fault.
Later that day I found out they dumpster had already been picked up so the company had sent 5 people to search the landfill! Yikes! They eventually found the box and recovered the card and to their credit they never pushed back on me. But I did notice that there never were any more boxes to throw away in the computer room.
Don
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re: Test Message
Good story Don. Those were interesting times.
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re: Test Message
I never punched a punch card, but when my wife and I moved to Canada, I attempted to tell the Literary Guild that had a new address. Somehow it was decided in the Lit Guild bunker that I had absconded with a book but not paid for it. Canada has a long reputation for harbouring book thieves.)
I did indeed have the book, but I had paid for it, so I returned the bill that I had received along with a punch card that was enclosed in the envelope, presumably as "proof" of my indebtedness. I explained that I owed them nothing. Their response: To dun me again, and send another punch card. I returned it with another explanation, and received yet another! And then our dog, Shelley, a Shetland Sheepdog, came to my rescue.
Shelley, who was a good reader but didn't like the Literary Guild's titles (no books about dogs, at least no classic novels about dogs), had got hold of the latest punch card and proceeded to punch it a few more times with her sharp teeth, thoroughly moisten it with doggie saliva, wrinkle it badly, and even eat a corner of it. When it was dry and more or less flat, I returned it, but only after ignoring the warning not to fold, staple, or mutilate (further), along with a letter of abject apology, explaining once again that I owed them nothing, and finally got an response from a human admitting that they had made an error and … would I like to continue my membership? No.
Shelley was so supportive of my problem with the Literary Guild that she vowed never to read one of their book choices. And she didn't.
boB
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re: Test Message
I did visit a newspaper when I was on Okinawa (early 70s) and saw all the molten lead in the composing room. The machine looked quite primitive.
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