a544@mindlink.UUCP (Rick McCormack) (12/21/90)
John DeRosa, uunet!motcid!derosaj, in an article writes: > BTW, where did 132 come from? Looks like a number that > someone pulled from mid-air like 5280 feet in a mile or 2.5 > inches in a British Nail (gawd, I love the CRC). in text based systems, using mono-spaced text, and the standard (Ha-ha) eight inch wide paper of the teletype, there were 80 characters in a standard 10-pitch line; 96 in a 12-pitch line. (these were known as pica and elite, respectively.) Compressed type was printed at 16.5 characters per inch. Voila!! 16.5(cpi) X 8(inches per line) = 132 characters per line. ______________________________________________________________ | Rick McCormack | IMAGISTICS BUSINESS THEATRE TECHNOLOGY | | Vancouver, BC | Information transfer - with a purpose. | | CANADA | ________________________________________ | | AOL: Rique | INTERACTIVE COMPREHENSIVE ENLIGHTENING | |________________|____________________________________________|
a544@mindlink.UUCP (Rick McCormack) (12/22/90)
in an article. Marc T. Kaufman, (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu) says: > When 132 column printout originated, there were no > "compressed" teletypes. 132 characters, at 10 characters per > inch (pica spacing), is just under 13.2" wide. This is > (almost) the most printing that you can get on 14" wide > tractor-feed paper... of the kind used in the IBM 1403 > printer. Older, drum based 402 printers, could only print > 120 characters across. 132 is also a multiple of 12, which > just happens to be the bit-width of an IBM 704x or 709x data > channel (this is useful for printers that are loaded by row, > rather than by column). 132 is also 6 x 22. Each 7090 word > held 6 characters (6 bits per character). 132 character > screen displays were invented specifically to be able to > view an entire print line at once. However, I checked back into the stuff I learned back in 1966 from the Canadian Pacific Telecommunications course I took. In my original reply, I stated > in text based systems, using mono-spaced text, and the > standard (Ha-ha) eight inch wide paper of the teletype, > there were 80 characters in a standard 10-pitch line; 96 in > a 12-pitch line. (these were known as pica and elite, > respectively.) Compressed type was printed at 16.5 > characters per inch. Voila!! I goofed. According to my notes made at the time, the poaper width of which I spoke was for TELEX, not TELETYPE. The Telex machines we used in the field offices used a compressed spacing between letters for the 132 characters per line printing, yielding the 132 chars per line I mention. ______________________________________________________________ | Rick McCormack | IMAGISTICS BUSINESS THEATRE TECHNOLOGY | | Vancouver, BC | Information transfer - with a purpose. | | CANADA | ________________________________________ | | AOL: Rique | INTERACTIVE COMPREHENSIVE ENLIGHTENING | |________________|____________________________________________|
kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) (12/23/90)
In article <4208@mindlink.UUCP> a544@mindlink.UUCP (Rick McCormack) writes: >John DeRosa, uunet!motcid!derosaj, in an article writes: -> BTW, where did 132 come from? Looks like a number that -> someone pulled from mid-air like 5280 feet in a mile or 2.5 -> inches in a British Nail (gawd, I love the CRC). .in text based systems, using mono-spaced text, and the standard (Ha-ha) eight .inch wide paper of the teletype, there were 80 characters in a standard .10-pitch line; 96 in a 12-pitch line. (these were known as pica and elite, .respectively.) Compressed type was printed at 16.5 characters per inch. .Voila!! When 132 column printout originated, there were no "compressed" teletypes. 132 characters, at 10 characters per inch (pica spacing), is just under 13.2" wide. This is (almost) the most printing that you can get on 14" wide tractor-feed paper... of the kind used in the IBM 1403 printer. Older, drum based 402 printers, could only print 120 characters across. 132 is also a multiple of 12, which just happens to be the bit-width of an IBM 704x or 709x data channel (this is useful for printers that are loaded by row, rather than by column). 132 is also 6 x 22. Each 7090 word held 6 characters (6 bits per character). 132 character screen displays were invented specifically to be able to view an entire print line at once. Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)