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Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)?

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"Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> writes:
> In the late 50's I thought the main tape problem was that many of the
> tape drives were designed for telemetry and someone in their marketing
> department said "Hey, these would be great on computers, too".  They
> weren't great at all. 

Fifty years of storage innovation; Magnetic tape and beyond 
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_fifty.html

The Setting

June 1949: Recorded music was on 78 rpm platters and "wire recorders"
were the mainstay of radio. Magnetic tape had only recently emerged from
the laboratory into a few broadcasts. A room full of vacuum tubes and
miles of wire accomplished what a handheld calculator would be able to
do faster by the 1980s. Information storage meant books, filing cabinets
or -- to those at the leading edge of data processing technology --
paper punch cards. Reels of tape, tape cartridges and programmable
computers were the stuff of science fiction.

IBM was about to change all that.

The Challenge

A more compact means of storing data permanently had to be developed.
The U.S. Social Security Administration was pressing IBM to solve this
record storage problem -- acres of filing cabinets filled with punch
cards containing social security data about every working American.

... 

Byron Phelps, patent holder and principal figure in developing magnetic
tape, recalled, "We had tried more dense paper cards for data storage,
but the improvement was only a few times better. Punched paper tape
offered no great advantage either. Magnetic tape had just come into its
own in audio and offered the most promise."

... snip ...

IBM 701 Tape Drive; The First Magnetic Tape Drive for Computer Data
Storage
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/701-tape.html

In 1949, IBM began to plan for a new storage and i/o medium to take the
place of punched cards. The new medium would be more compact, faster,
cheaper, and reusable. Magnetic tape technology had been used for audio
recording and playback since World War II, and it was adapted for
computer use -- initially in a prototype called the Tape Processing
Machine (TPM), 1950-51. Of course computer data storage and retrieval is
different from audio recording and playback, requiring accurate
positioning (both forwards and backwards) to arbitrary spots and
therefore much fancier motors, not to mention stress relief for the tape
itself, accomplished with vacuum columns (invented by IBM). New digital
recording techniques were developed allowing mapping of computer memory
to tape with error detection, coding of records and boundaries, and so
forth.

... snip ...

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

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Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-04-26 11:42 +0000
  Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Jon Elson <jmelson@wustl.edu> - 2016-04-26 14:36 -0500
    Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-04-27 00:42 +0200
      Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2016-04-27 13:48 +0000
        Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-04-28 08:41 +0200
    Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-04-27 12:40 +0000
      Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Andy Burns <feb2017-usenet@adslpipe.co.uk> - 2016-04-27 14:51 +0100
        Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Jon Elson <elson@pico-systems.com> - 2016-04-27 22:27 -0500
          Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-04-28 12:06 +0000
            Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2016-04-28 07:49 -0700
              Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-04-28 17:03 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? "Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2016-04-28 12:18 -0500
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2016-04-28 11:19 -0700
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2016-04-28 14:19 -0700
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2016-04-29 16:47 -0500
              Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-04-29 12:18 +0000
            Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-04-28 17:03 +0000
              Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-04-29 12:18 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-04-29 15:14 +0200
            Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? pechter@pechter.net (William Pechter) - 2016-05-03 14:09 +0000
      Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Jon Elson <elson@pico-systems.com> - 2016-04-27 22:19 -0500
        Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? pechter@pechter.net (William Pechter) - 2016-05-03 14:21 +0000
      Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? pechter@pechter.net (William Pechter) - 2016-05-03 14:03 +0000
        Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Jon Elson <jmelson@wustl.edu> - 2016-05-03 13:58 -0500
        Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Jon Elson <jmelson@wustl.edu> - 2016-05-03 14:22 -0500
          Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? pechter@pechter.net (William Pechter) - 2016-05-04 20:21 +0000
        tape drives [was Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)?] Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> - 2016-05-03 15:39 -0400
        Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-05-04 13:02 +0000
          Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Jon Elson <elson@pico-systems.com> - 2016-05-04 11:45 -0500
            Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-05-05 01:13 +0200
              Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Jon Elson <jmelson@wustl.edu> - 2016-05-05 14:25 -0500
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2016-05-05 19:34 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-05-06 13:28 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2016-05-06 14:39 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2016-05-06 14:41 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-05-07 13:14 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-05-07 16:47 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btopenworld.com> - 2016-05-07 23:30 +0100
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-05-08 13:08 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Jon Elson <elson@pico-systems.com> - 2016-05-07 16:07 -0500
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2016-05-07 21:23 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-05-08 13:08 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2016-05-09 15:13 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-05-09 17:05 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? pechter@pechter.net (William Pechter) - 2016-05-09 22:41 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-05-10 12:01 +0200
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2016-05-10 06:42 -0400
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-05-10 12:34 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2016-05-10 13:05 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-05-11 12:18 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2016-05-11 13:27 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-05-10 15:53 +0200
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2016-05-11 12:18 +0000
                Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)? "Simo" <dhy287@gmail.com> - 2016-05-10 04:56 +1000

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