From: Frank da Cruz (fdc@columbia.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 14:48:33 EST
> Yes, I did both cards and punched paper tape as a teenager.
>
I did them too. Nothing to do with Unicode, but those who would like an
introduction to punched cards and early computing (mainly IBM oriented)
are welcome to take a look at this:
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/
particularly the 1930s, 40s, 50s, and 60s sections, and follow the many
links from each entry. In particular, you can see the basic character set
of the IBM 360 (as generated by the IBM 29 Card Punch) here:
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/029.html
(scroll down a bit after the photo). And for a fascinating (to some :-)
history of the early development of IBM and ASCII character sets, see:
Mackenzie, Charles E., Character Sets, History and Development,
Addison-Wesley (1980).
It might be surprising to learn that there was almost as much discussion,
argument, and compromise over the early 64- and 96-character and 8-bit
character sets as there is today over the worldwide Universal Character
Set. Well, maybe not so surprising since the demand for including
characters was so great and the space so small.
- Frank
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