then here’s something interesting to note. If you took one of today's average sized MP3 songs, let's say 5 megabytes in size, then rendered the file in punch cards, it would require 49,932 cards, leaving columns 73-80 available for a sequence number. If you are brave or stupid enough to not want nor feel the need for sequence numbers, then you can use all 80-columns for rendering thus yielding a mere 43,690 cards. Why a sequence number? The sequence numbers at the end of the cards were generally included in case the cards were dropped, intentionally or otherwise. This was especially important for card decks that were punched by the system and not by hand on an IBM 129 (or 029). Many times, computer rendered punch decks did not include any printing on the very top indicating what character lies below. For cards that expressed binary data, this was almost always blank. If you ever wondered why IBM mainframe computers, displays, languages and SDKs were always so 72 and 80 column centric, now you know.
Think of it though. If memory serves, that’s a stack of cards over 9’ in height and would take about a half hour or longer to read the deck into the computer. All to play a 3 minute song.
Today, even with my older 5th generation 60gig iPod, I easily can fit over 2500 MP3s in the palm of my hand. My iPod can also act as a radio, address book, picture album, calendar, stopwatch, alarm clock and VCR (plays videos). Even IBM has grown beyond the limits of 80-bytes, but they do still support for legacy reasons.
As the Mother of a dear friend of mine in Atlanta once said to me in an especially deep southern accent, “Tee-yum, we’re livin’ in the future!”
(mostly copied over from my older blog site)
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