Those old GE card readers were wicked fast.  The occasional card jams took a while to recover from since they would jam so many cards into a tiny space meant to hold a single card.

To tell the truth, I never noticed the sound level much because the line printers were so much louder.

 - Rod

> On Dec 19, 2023, at 11:11 PM, Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
> > Paul -- you left out the other "feature" -- the noise, which was still deafening even with a model N1 and its cover. 
> 
> It was indeed loud, but GE out-roared them with a blindingly fast card reader. The machine had a supposedly gentle touch; it grabbed cards with vacuum rather than tongs. But the make-and-break pneumatic explosions sounded like a machine gun. A noise meter I borrowed from the Labs' tool crib read 90db 6 feet away.
> 
> Doug