sections of talks n' dialogues~~~

[joychow1985]

1."Even long before computer became popular, he was punching cards and feeding them into the big mainframe computer at Ohio State University."

What does "to punch cards" mean?

2. "But how can you avoid jet lag? With that late flight and a six-hour difference in time, it's bound to take you a couple of days to adjust."

What does "jet lag" mean?

3. "OK. Now I see why you're not enjoying the preparation. I can't quite picture you fasting!"

How can I understand the underlined sentence?

thank u guys in advance~~~ ^ ^

[carolegif]

1. In the early days of computing, you had a card for each item (a bit like comptometer operating which was a forerunner) and they were put into the computer so it could read where the holes were and get the information. After the discovery silicon chip, they were not needed.

2. Jet lag is that awful feeling when your body is out of sinc with the time zone it is in. For example: flying back from the US on the "red eye" flight, you body thinks it is night when it is actually morning. You wake up in the early hours full of the joys of spring, and halfway through the afternoon you are nodding off!

3. This means the person talking cannot see the other person putting himself out, or enduring hardship to get the job done.

carolegif

[joychow1985]

thank u 4 ur patience~~~carolegif~~~but how can i understand "put oneself out"? ^ ^

[THECORBYLOON]

To put oneself out means to do something specially or something that involves a lot of work or time and effort.

[Fitzer]

Ah punch cards, so many memories, they were in use long after the invention of the silicon chip though Carol, I was still punching and loading cards in 1980 on a brand new IBM mainframe. Small, sad, geek note, standard line length for a lot of languages (COBOL, TAL etc) is still 80 characters because that's how wide a card was.

[carolegif]

I remember when I first went to work and BP had one of the first computer to do their payroll. It took the whole ground floor of their building on Ropemaker Street! Hard to think it all fits into something as small as a fingernail!!

carolegif

[jno]

I read somewhere your mobile phone has more computing power than the first moon shot...

3 means 'I can't form a mental picture of you' ('fasting' is going without food, nothing to do with running fast).

[Fitzer]

Carolegif, I worked for BP International at Britannic House and BH West for a couple of years from '85, were you there then?

Jno, todays mobiles certainly do, the shuttle originally flew with 5 250K computers, yes thats 250 kilobytes of memory.

[rescuer]

'Punch cards' had 80 columns along the length. They were placed in a machine, the size of a desk, which had a keyboard. Data from documents was 'keyed' in by the operator. The machine punched appropriate holes along the card and at different heights to represent the information from the documents.

The punched cards and documents were passed to another operator who had a 'verifying' machine. this operator would key in the information from the documents. This machine did not punch a hole but checked that the hole was in the correct position on the card. If there was an error the card was rejected for correction.

For a time I worked for a bureau which did work for a variety of organisation including the Bank of England.To do an estimated cost of a job we took a sample of documents and counted the alpha letters and the numerical figures. 5000 alpha an hour was the standard and 8000 numerical an hour. From the number of documents to be processed we could then estimate the time required to complete the work.

When finished the cards were shipped to the customers who fed them into their computers from where they could use the information.

Things have moved on since then !

[joychow1985]

thank u all so much~~~through ur talks i've not only gotten the answer, but known more about the computer's history~~~^ ^