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 Chrysler Corp use of Remington Rand 90 Column Round Punch Data CardsJump to page : 1 Now viewing page 1 [50 messages per page] | View previous thread :: View next thread |
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56D500boy |
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Expert 5K+ Posts: 9904     Location: Lower Mainland BC | . The use of these cards was unknown to me until yesterday when I was trying to help with the interpretation of a 1954 Dodge "IBM" card with strange round punches. After poking around the internet a bit, I learned that the round punches were NOT IBM card-related. They related to the Remington Rand corp 90 column (two rows of 45 columns) that used a series of anywhere from 1 to 6 punches to represent a number, letter or character, as per this "Rosetta Stone": This was one of the 54 Dodge cards in question (note - you can read "REMINGTON RAND" on the left margin of the card. This is what I call the "Rosetta Stone": I suggested that I would contact Professor Douglas Jones who has previously helped me with interpretation of IBM cards. I did email Professor Jones later yesterday afternoon. Between the time that I emailed him and I discovered his response last evening (I think it went to Junk for some reason), I poked around the internet and found that "key" ("Rosetta Stone" for the 90 Column Remington Rand punch data cards). Professor Jones had limited knowledge of the Remington Rand cards but sent me what he knew. I printed off what I had found and turned it 90 degrees to fit the format of what he had sent. Together, they looked like something I could work with. But it was late (after midnight) so I quit for the night. This morning, I labelled what I had with Row numbers and then manually annotated the "key" with the punch rows that represented each letter and number. (See below). Interesting that odd numbers (0, 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9) only required one punch but even numbers (2,4,6,and 8) required two punches, one of which was "6". The only number whose punch was identical to the value was "3". Letters required at least two punches and more often than not, three punches. Characters are off the map (up to 6 punches) Must have been "fun" coming up with that. I would imagine that some World War 2 (or Cold War) Cryptographers might have been employed by Remington Rand. After I had manually annotated what I had found, I loaded what Professor Jones sent me into "Paint" and annotated his info with the info from my manually annotated key, filling in his blanks (missing info) as I went. (See below). I didn't see any errors in his info, just blankswhere, I guess, he didn't have punch card into to work with. So I learned something about the Remington Rand punch cards that the Chrysler Corp used up to 1954 or 55, before they switched to the 80 Column IBM cards. The biggest take away for me was the fact that on the Remington Rand cards, whatever got punched in a particular column got printed directly above the punches, in the same column unlike the IBM cards and the use of a patch-cord equipped interpreter/printer that would shoot the printed character all over the IBM card. Using this "new" (to me) info, I have annotated a 55 Chrysler Remington Rand round punch 90 column information card: Edited by 56D500boy 2024-03-10 7:12 PM (90ColumnRemingtonRandRosettaStoneInterpreter_Annotated_small.jpg) (RemingtonRand90ColumnPunchCardInterpretationKey_DouglasJones_Annotated.jpg) (55ChryslerDataCard_90ColumnRemingtonRand_Annotated.jpg) Attachments ----------------  90ColumnRemingtonRandRosettaStoneInterpreter_Annotated_small.jpg (216KB - 20 downloads) RemingtonRand90ColumnPunchCardInterpretationKey_DouglasJones_Annotated.jpg (66KB - 19 downloads) 55ChryslerDataCard_90ColumnRemingtonRand_Annotated.jpg (210KB - 19 downloads) | ||
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| mikes2nd |
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Expert 5K+ Posts: 5006 | |||
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| 22mafeja |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 655  Location: Finland | |||
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| 56D500boy |
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Expert 5K+ Posts: 9904 Location: Lower Mainland BC | 22mafeja - 2024-03-11 1:29 AM You are really a dedicated FWL world explorer Dave! Well, I don't know about that Ralf. What it does demonstrate is the lengths that I will go to in order to answer a question nobody was actually asking  I think the big take away with these Remington Rand Round Punch data cars is that the info contained in the punch column is printed directly above the column. No tricky transforms, etc. as with the rectangular punch 80 column IBM cards. This should help Igor (frwl) and Robert D (RDP) if they are analyzing an older round punch card, e.g 54 to 56 Chryslers.  | ||
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