Posted by Arthur (in NY) on Thursday, November 10, 2005 at 5:27PM :
In Reply to: and only 4 months after Pearl Harbor. posted by Chris Davis - Centerville, UT on Thursday, November 10, 2005 at 5:16PM :
There was an early manual system, of which this may be an example, of sorting punched cards.
Each card's individual attributes were represented by a punched hole in a particular location.
There were long slender steel rods, similar to knitting needles, that were inserted into a deck of these cards. If they went all the way through the deck, all the trucks (in this case) with the same attributes would be chosen, and could be removed from the deck.
The system actually has an ancient ancestor: the cards that were used to guide the operation of weaving machines (looms).
APB
Follow Ups: