User:Ragityman/

This machine handled payroll, class assignments, grades and records, and university business in general. Data was entered via a card reader of a deck of Hollerith cards, which we students created at the keyboard of an IBM keypunch machine. Each deck constituted a job. There was a variation based on punched paper tape. Results were also generated on paper: greenbar, or white perforated sheets, accordian-folded, with drive holes at opposite edges. My best friend growing up had a summer courier job after highschool delivering these Hollerith decks to Princeton University and retrieving the accordioned results. This constituted time-share.

What that second project taught me was more profound, I think, than my first lesson, though I've arguably reaped more short-term benefit from the first. Maybe it's unrealistic to try to understand the two independently. To build, or even just to understand the basics of, a simple computer, immediately grabbed the attention of the hoi-polloi.