Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

ANSI x3.21-1967?

145 views
Skip to first unread message

Van Snyder

unread,
May 20, 2009, 5:01:06 PM5/20/09
to
Does anybody have a copy of ANSI x3.21-1967, now known as ANSI INCITS 21-1967?

ANSI will sell me one for $30.00. INCITS claims not to have a copy on file.

A question it could answer came up informally at the last Fortran committee
meeting, so I had hoped INCITS would send me one. No dice.

--
Van Snyder | What fraction of Americans believe
Van.S...@jpl.nasa.gov | Wrestling is real and NASA is fake?
Any alleged opinions are my own and have not been approved or
disapproved by JPL, CalTech, NASA, the President, or anybody else.

Richard Maine

unread,
May 20, 2009, 6:41:48 PM5/20/09
to
Van Snyder <vsn...@math.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

> Does anybody have a copy of ANSI x3.21-1967, now known as ANSI INCITS 21-1967?
>
> ANSI will sell me one for $30.00. INCITS claims not to have a copy on file.
>
> A question it could answer came up informally at the last Fortran committee
> meeting, so I had hoped INCITS would send me one. No dice.

"Rectangular Holes in Twelve-Row Punched Cards"? Must be a new direction
for f2008+ :-)

Sorry, no I don't have one; was just amused after I googled what it was.

--
Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience;
email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgment.
domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain

glen herrmannsfeldt

unread,
May 20, 2009, 8:34:23 PM5/20/09
to
Van Snyder <vsn...@math.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
< Does anybody have a copy of ANSI x3.21-1967, now known as
< ANSI INCITS 21-1967?

< ANSI will sell me one for $30.00. INCITS claims not to have a copy on file.

< A question it could answer came up informally at the last
< Fortran committee meeting, so I had hoped INCITS would send me one.
< No dice.

I don't know specifically about this one, but many ANSI standards
have equivalents in ECMA available for free. Though if you need
the exact standard maybe that won't help, anyway.

-- glen

mecej4

unread,
May 20, 2009, 9:05:42 PM5/20/09
to
Richard Maine wrote:

> Van Snyder <vsn...@math.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
>
>> Does anybody have a copy of ANSI x3.21-1967, now known as ANSI
>> INCITS 21-1967?
>>
>> ANSI will sell me one for $30.00. INCITS claims not to have a
>> copy on file.
>>
>> A question it could answer came up informally at the last
>> Fortran committee
>> meeting, so I had hoped INCITS would send me one. No dice.
>
> "Rectangular Holes in Twelve-Row Punched Cards"? Must be a new
> direction for f2008+ :-)
>

I have often wondered if there was some standard that covered the practice of putting an oblique ink stripe on the side of a deck to help keep the cards in order. That was the analog version of radix sorting, was it not?

-- mecej4

Stewart Russell

unread,
Jul 26, 2021, 12:26:03 PM7/26/21
to
On Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 5:01:06 p.m. UTC-4, Van Snyder wrote:
> Does anybody have a copy of ANSI x3.21-1967, now known as ANSI INCITS 21-1967?

Nothing like a timely answer, but the Internet Archive does, as "Federal Information Processing Standards Publication: rectangular holes in twelve-row punched cards" — https://archive.org/details/federalinformati13nati/mode/2up , aka FIPS PUB 13.

A typical punched card *hole* was 3.175 mm tall and 1.397 mm wide. The only available IBM card stock specification¹ suggests it was 161.1 gsm ("99 pound basis weight") so each chad had a mass of 0.000715 g.

¹: http://ibm-1401.info/CardStockSpecifications.html

gah4

unread,
Jul 26, 2021, 2:20:30 PM7/26/21
to
On Monday, July 26, 2021 at 9:26:03 AM UTC-7, Stewart Russell wrote:

(snip)

> Nothing like a timely answer, but the Internet Archive does,
> as "Federal Information Processing Standards Publication: rectangular holes in twelve-row punched cards" —
> https://archive.org/details/federalinformati13nati/mode/2up , aka FIPS PUB 13.
>
> A typical punched card *hole* was 3.175 mm tall and 1.397 mm wide.
> The only available IBM card stock specification¹ suggests it was 161.1 gsm
> ("99 pound basis weight") so each chad had a mass of 0.000715 g.

The Living Computer Museum has an 029 keypunch, and when they were open
(before Covid restrictions) I punched a Fortran 2008, and later a Fortran 2013
program on one. I believe the latter used a DO CONCURRENT statement.
(And both were fixed-form, as you might expect on cards.)

Maybe the only Fortran 2013 program ever punched on cards.


Thomas Koenig

unread,
Jul 26, 2021, 3:56:11 PM7/26/21
to
gah4 <ga...@u.washington.edu> schrieb:

> Maybe the only Fortran 2013 program ever punched on cards.

Probably, since Fortran 2013 is not a very widely used language :-)

(I assume you meant Fortran 2018, and what you wrote is probably
true for that as well)

steve kargl

unread,
Jul 26, 2021, 4:45:48 PM7/26/21
to
I doubt that it is the only Fortran 2018 [sic] program ever to be
punched onto cards. Why? Well, with very few exceptions a
valid Fortran 77 code is a valid Fortran 2018 code. I know I used
punched cards in the 1981/82 time frame. I still have a deck
for computing one's biorythm someplace in my trove of old stuff.

--
steve

gah4

unread,
Jul 26, 2021, 7:54:07 PM7/26/21
to
On Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 6:05:42 PM UTC-7, mecej4 wrote:

> I have often wondered if there was some standard that covered the practice of putting an oblique
> ink stripe on the side of a deck to help keep the cards in order.
> That was the analog version of radix sorting, was it not?

To make the analog radix sort, you would need more than one diagonal line.

One that, as you say, goes diagonal over the whole deck.
Others that go diagonal at sharper angles, multiple passes over the whole deck.
The first one might not be good enough to separate nearby cards, where the second
one would be able to do that.

You might also have one horizontal line over the deck, and a different one for different
decks. You never know, more than one might fall on the floor at the same time.

OK, my favorite card deck story. One time, someone put a leaf in my card deck.
(Well, more than one, but I got the rest out.) The 2501 card reader pulls the card one
direction, (9 edge direction), ready to read, and then the other way to actually read.
Card and leaf managed the first step, but not the second. There is a little door,
and then you lift up a plastic guard. I took out the leaf, made sure no-one was
looking, and continued on. No problems after that.


gah4

unread,
Jul 26, 2021, 8:00:15 PM7/26/21
to
On Monday, July 26, 2021 at 1:45:48 PM UTC-7, steve kargl wrote:

(snip)

> I doubt that it is the only Fortran 2018 [sic] program ever to be
> punched onto cards. Why? Well, with very few exceptions a
> valid Fortran 77 code is a valid Fortran 2018 code. I know I used
> punched cards in the 1981/82 time frame. I still have a deck
> for computing one's biorythm someplace in my trove of old stuff.

OK, more specifically, not compatible with previous standards.

Or maybe the first DO CONCURRENT statement punched on a card.

The museum is now closed, and it seems uncertain what the
future will be, so now I don't have a place to punch more cards.


gah4

unread,
Jul 26, 2021, 8:06:30 PM7/26/21
to
On Monday, July 26, 2021 at 9:26:03 AM UTC-7, Stewart Russell wrote:

(snip)

> A typical punched card *hole* was 3.175 mm tall and 1.397 mm wide.
> The only available IBM card stock specification¹ suggests it was 161.1 gsm
> ("99 pound basis weight") so each chad had a mass of 0.000715 g.

One estimate is that the upper range of the mass of SARS-CoV-2 virions
in an infected person is 100 ug, maybe only 1 ug.

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/25/e2024815118

Jeff Ryman

unread,
Jul 27, 2021, 12:45:48 AM7/27/21
to
My best punched card story (somewhat off topic):
One evening around the middle of February 2008 I went to a Mexican fast food restaurant near where we lived in Las Vegas after leaving the hospital where my wife had just endured a nine-hour surgery because I was tired and didn't want to cook. While waiting for my order I got into a conversation with another patron who was also waiting. Somehow the conversation turned to computers and it happened both of us had used punch cards "back in the day." The other patron (a woman) and her husband had both served in the Army in the middle to late 1960s at which time he was stationed in Vietnam and she someplace in the continental United States. Both worked in what was called "data processing" in those ancient days. To send each other intimate information without anyone else reading their correspondence they typed love letters to each other on punch cards without the printing turned on, then sent the card decks to each other in official mail between the two data processing units. Upon receiving a card deck each of them would run the deck through a printer or duplicate the deck with printing turned on to reveal the message. I thought it was rather clever.

Robin Vowels

unread,
Jul 29, 2021, 4:29:54 AM7/29/21
to
IBM wasn't the only maker of punch cards. Thicknesses differed.
The ICL cards were thicker than IBM ones.
0 new messages