X marks the deck (was Re: [OT] paper on Retro ?)

From: Lawrence Walker <lgwalker_at_mts.net>
Date: Mon Oct 21 18:01:42 2002

 The real test of a card person is how well he "hips" up the cards in order to
get them perfectly alligned before submitting them to a sorter and not
jamming up the machine. Most sorters had a little L-shaped plastic rig on the
right end for you to do this. Your left hand heel would butt them while your
right hand loosely held them. Cards that were "bent, folded, or spindalled"
were duplicated or re copied by the card-punch operators. I was pretty good
but it took many instances of having to unjam the sorters before I got the
hang of it. A far cry from 5.25 floppies and their much enhanced abilitiy to
store data. And coffee-talk was about this kid "Elvis" who had appeared on
the Ed Sullivan show. Mid-50s and I was classified as a "jr. IBM operator" at
$35 a week which was raised to $37.50 after 3 months. Nontheless I was
able to pay my rent and catch a lot of memorable jazz greats at bars in
Toronto such as Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, and Billie Holliday.
 In rereading this it sounds like the old fart I am. But always current in
perspective !! :^)

Lawrence

Lawrence

> > Who remembers drawing a cross or a diagonal line on the top of the card
> > deck, so you had some chance of re-ordering the deck if someone dropped the
> > box?
>
> Not quite the same order of tragedy, but many may recall drawing X's across the
> top end of the labels of (boxes of) 3.5" floppies full of, say, Retrospect
> Remote backups of Mac Pluses. And in this case you _could_ use it for sorting
> the inevitable shuffled deck...
>
> Sigh. You can tell I never worked with cards - I sortof wish I could dig up a
> reader and punch... It seems like it might be fun (so long as I can go back to
> my nice X11 desktop the instant I get tired of it ;^)
>
> --Steve.
>
>


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Received on Mon Oct 21 2002 - 18:01:42 BST