ebay - cardamatic

From: Paul Koning <pkoning_at_equallogic.com>
Date: Wed Feb 16 08:30:12 2005

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com> writes:

 Tom> On Tue, 15 Feb 2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
>>> The nice thing about cards, and their use today (as we play with
>>> old machines) is that unlike paper tape, you can have a print
>>> shop make up cards fairly easily, even with the index chop. The
>>> only thing that would be "faked" would be the nice rounded
>>> corners. I think most card handling machines would not care too
>>> much if the corners were chamfered or filleted (sp?).
>> I imagine the corners were rounded to avoid jamming as they were
>> fed into the reader mechanism?

 Tom> Oh I would bet card tolerances are extremely tight for autofeed
 Tom> cards. Likely a local print shop would have trouble making good
 Tom> consistent cards from that really unique card stock IBM used.
 Tom> It's not very ordinary, and a stack of fresh cards is like a
 Tom> solid block, absolutely smooth!

So? The same goes for a stack of paper from the paper company.
Printing presses are just as finicky about tolerances as card readers
are; many of them run at MUCH higher speeds. (Go watch a newspaper
press some time...)

The specs for punch cards are well known, and it wouldn't surprise me
if they match one of the standard weights of "cover" or "card" stock.
If so, then any good quality smooth uncoated stock of that weight
would serve.

As for rounded corners -- printers can die cut stuff, so that's
doable, but cards with square corners have been used. For example,
the old "Giro" bank transfer by mail payment system that appeared in
Holland in the 1960s (or 1950s, I'm not sure) used punch cards with
square corners. There was a corner cut at the upper left as usual,
but no rounding on the others. Those cards were processed by the
millions, day in day out...

          paul
Received on Wed Feb 16 2005 - 08:30:12 GMT