Why is this picture interesting for IT people?

[The_Traveler]

Taken ~ 10 years ago in village outside Ho Chi Minh City.

 

[Derrel]

I'm guessing the simple computer networking infrastructure strung up there in the shop is what they find of interest...

 

[astroNikon]

I don't get it

 

[sscarmack]

I'm IT, and I don't find it interesting one bit.

 

[SnappingShark]

IT? Call health and safety!

 

[The_Traveler]

These young guys.... whaddya expect.

A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contained either commands for controlling automated machinery or data for data processing applications. Both commands and data were represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Now obsolete as a recording medium, punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century for controlling textile looms and in the late 19th and early 20th century for controlling fairground organs and related instruments. Punched cards were used through most of the 20th century in what became known as the data processing industry; the use of unit record machines, organized into data processing systems, for data input, processing, and storage.[SUP][1][/SUP] Early digital computers used punched cards, often prepared using keypunch machines, as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data."

 

[The_Traveler]

the point being that these looms were being used in the very last part of 20th century to weave silk in rural Vietnam.
there were some replacement cogs visible that had clearly been machined much more recently but these looms had been in place for who knows how long.

 

[astroNikon]

These young guys.... whaddya expect.

A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contained either commands for controlling automated machinery or data for data processing applications. Both commands and data were represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Now obsolete as a recording medium, punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century for controlling textile looms and in the late 19th and early 20th century for controlling fairground organs and related instruments. Punched cards were used through most of the 20th century in what became known as the data processing industry; the use of unit record machines, organized into data processing systems, for data input, processing, and storage.[SUP][1][/SUP] Early digital computers used punched cards, often prepared using keypunch machines, as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data."

I saw the textile loom ....

but truthfully ... our punchcard systems at UM were regulated to one small room in the early 1980s.
Never looked back.

It's kinda like something that time forgot.
More semi-modern geeks might take a second look if an Altair 8800 computer was sitting there.

 

[pgriz]

When I went to college (starting in late 1960's), we had punch cards for all the input. You had to have a valid ID of the right type to have access to the teletype machines, which were therefore a few notches higher in status compared to the punch card minions. In retrospect, I shudder to think of how many forests I personally destroyed running variants of the "life" game... As for the punch-card looms: there are/were various types which also used paper tape, or what looks like the old-style piano player rolls. And in twenty or so years, the whiz-bang smartphone you'll all so enamoured with, will be seen as quaint relics of the "grandpa" era.

Lew, neat images. Harks back to a time when a "bug" in the program usually did have six legs.

 

[The_Traveler]

My brother wrote his PhDs thesis on punch cards.
i wrote mine on an Apple using word star on a floppy.
Progress is most amazing when you have a bit of history.

 

[runnah]

My brother wrote his PhDs thesis on punch cards. i wrote mine on an Apple using word star on a floppy. Progress is most amazing when you have a bit of history.

Hey now I remember my father bringing home old punch cards for us kids to color on.

 

[snowbear]

My brother wrote his PhDs thesis on punch cards. i wrote mine on an Apple using word star on a floppy. Progress is most amazing when you have a bit of history.

Hey now I remember my father bringing home old punch cards for us kids to color on.

I got to draw on the back of green bar paper. Later, he gave me some cool looking punch cards (Atomic Energy Commission) when I was taking my first programming class. I color coded my stack - green for JCL, white for source code, yellow for data.