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Into The Bit Bucket With Thee (lemmus.org)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] 6 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Related question for old data media enjoyers: I have extremely vague memories of a computer I used as a kid that had a punchcard like system where the holes had colored cellophane or something in them, presumably to add a few more bits of data per hole. I think the cards were probably some sort of plastic or maybe laminated paper? Has anyone heard of something like this?

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Nice, but it wasn’t a viewmaster. Similar idea, but it was an actual computer of some sort.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    What you're describing sounds very weird because punchcards are mechanical media and colored cellophane would be optical. We didn't have any popular optical media until CDs. I think using optical media to store the extremely limited amount of data something like punchcard can store makes no sense.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    It only really made sense as a way to give slides meant for human viewing, computerized data for sorting, filling, or otherwise using simultaneously with the slide. Like, a picture of an engineering diagram, patent, survey site, military target, etc.

    Before we could store a picture as raw binary data, this was an interesting way to fill the need to digitally notate images. Punch cards like this were definitely in use for a while. I have a post above with an image.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    I've seen punch cards where the optical media meant to be illuminated and projected for people to see, was accompanied by punched information for a computer to read. They were both on the same punch card. I want to say the USGS, the patent office, the army, and maybe Bell systems used these at some points?

    I think this may be what you remember? I've never seen one where the holes carried a few extra bits of color information though. I do not think that existed on an industrial scale. Was it in a niche children's toy?

    Edit: found an image of the ones I was referring to

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