[TUHS] Loud machines (was Compatibility Question)

[TUHS] Loud machines (was Compatibility Question)

[Douglas McIlroy]

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> 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

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[TUHS] Re: Loud machines (was Compatibility Question)

[arnold]

As late as 1981, the university I attended had an IBM 1130. Mainly it
was programmed in Fortran IV (but only 5 letters allowed in an identifier,
not 6) but it also had a Cobol compiler.

The Cobol compiler read cards about 1 every 3/4 second. By contrast, when
the Fortran compiler was reading cards, it sounded like a machine gun firing.

I wrote a program similar to banner(1) but that made the big letters up
out of the actual letters in Fortran. Although the cards are long gone, I
still have the code. :-)

Arnold

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

[TUHS] Re: Loud machines (was Compatibility Question)

[Rod Bartlett via TUHS]

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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


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