Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Fortran and other antiquities

[Rick Moseley (ramosel]

At the time I was working on systems with punch cards before I went off to school, I was also taking lessons and playing the Hammond organ my dad was so good on.  When I'd go to the music store they had a huge Allen console organ there that had a card reader in it for doing the voicing setups.  I used to take my folk's phone bill down and stick it in the machine just to see what sounds the phone bill would make!!!

And speaking of punched cards, a story from another prof.  When he was in college, (probably my early college years, too), they got phone bills with punched cards.  So for the first month on campus, they made NO extraneous phone calls so they'd get the minimum bill possible.  They took the card to the computer lab and duped it.  Then they overpaid by $1.  The second month, same thing, no extra calls.  Then the bill came, they compared the cards and found the punch indicating a "credit" to their account.  Henceforth all cards were punched in that location and sent back to the phone company, sans payment.  heh heh.....   ;-)