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Story: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan

CoRecursive: Coding Stories

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Using a Punch Card

When i was at m i t in 66, i used a programe called run off to do my thesis. A punch card is kind of like an index card, but it's wider because it has 80 columns. And you punch holes in that column to indicate what letters should go there. So each punch card represents one line of four train code. People would build their programmes this way by punching these cards into big boxes and then giving them to a computer operator.

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