Accounting machines, the IBM 1403, and why printers standardized on 132 columns
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Re: Accounting machines, the IBM 1403, and why printers standardized on 132 columns
#2An interesting read as always from Ken.
I've got a first-generation Apple Dot Matrix Printer that's up next for a restoration. I understand that I can still get drivers for this, but does anyone know what it might be worth? eBay comes up with nothing.
Re: Accounting machines, the IBM 1403, and why printers standardized on 132 columns
#3Those of us that were around in the days of mainframes and line printers remember that actually you sent 133 columns of characters to the printer, column 0 being the "carriage control" character. The most popular being blank, to advance one line, '1', to do a page eject a.k.a. top-of-form, and '+', overprint.
The story that I heard is that the '+' character's over-strike behavior was a side-effect of logic minimization in the printer controller of the 1403, and became very popular after someone discovered it.
IBM then issued an FCO (Field Change Order) that customer engineers installed in all 1403 printers that were on maintenance contracts, which was all of them, because you could not survive without a maintenance contract. The FCO "corrected the logic bug" that allowed overprinting. However, the newly announced 1403A printer supported overprinting as a feature.
The FCO included a toggle switch that allowed the customer engineer to do an instant field upgrade to the 1403A. Assuming, of course, that you paid for the field upgrade and increased rental and maintenance fees of the 1403A.
(I heard this story from an office mate who had been around in those days. He was a systems programmer that got the job by the then-standard path. As an undergrad, he figured out how to hack the OS to get free computer time. When they caught him, they offered him a job as an assistant systems programmer on the condition that he not share the secret.)
Re: Accounting machines, the IBM 1403, and why printers standardized on 132 columns
#4An interesting read as always from Ken. I've got a first-generation Apple Dot Matrix Printer that's up next for a restoration. I understand that I can still get drivers for this, but does anyone know what it might be worth? eBay comes up with nothing.
Dude, you send your friends greeting cards or invitations run off in Print Shop, that thing will be worth its weight in gold!
EDIT: Apparently this printer is the predecessor to the ImageWriter.
Re: Accounting machines, the IBM 1403, and why printers standardized on 132 columns
#5My first exposure to line printers was through a Control Data mainframe at a University in the mid '70's. There were a few Control Data printers at centralized locations, and user operated Univac printers more scattered. Both used 14 7/8 paper with 132 columns.
Re: Accounting machines, the IBM 1403, and why printers standardized on 132 columns
#6> the IBM 705 business computer rented for $43,000 a month (almost $400,000 in current dollars). But the IBM 1401 could be rented for $2500 per month, opening up the market to medium-sized businesses
Amazing that we are basically back in that place again: renting computers or paying for computer time.
Re: Accounting machines, the IBM 1403, and why printers standardized on 132 columns
#7Read the notes, it's especially interesting:
> in 1954, Remington Rand introduced the first high-speed drum printer, the "High Speed Off Line Printer System" for the UNIVAC computer. This printer produced 600 lines per minute at 130 characters per line. The printer used 18 kW of power and was cooled by 8 gallons per minute of chilled water.
Wow.
Re: Accounting machines, the IBM 1403, and why printers standardized on 132 columns
#8This is a lovely well-researched article on the origin of a number of otherwise bizarre I/O constants.
E.g. the following: "...why not use 130 instead of 132? Due to the complex alignment between the 1403's chain and the print hammers, a line width divisible by 3 (such as 132) works out better."
Re: Accounting machines, the IBM 1403, and why printers standardized on 132 columns
#9Why the IBM 402 had 43 alphanumeric typebars:
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
0000000001111111111222222222233333333334444
1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123Re: Accounting machines, the IBM 1403, and why printers standardized on 132 columns
#10Those of us that were around in the days of mainframes and line printers remember that actually you sent 133 columns of characters to the printer, column 0 being the "carriage control" character. The most popular being blank, to advance one line, '1', to do a page eject a.k.a. top-of-form, and '+', overprint. The story that I heard is that the '+' character's over-strike behavior was a side-effect of logic minimizati…
It was a bit different with the IBM 1403 printer on the IBM 1401 computer. You added a suffix to the write line instruction to suppress the line feed. This optional "space suppression" feature cost $63.
As far as I can tell, using a '+' in the first column to overprint was a Fortran thing, known as Fortran Carriage Control.
One entertaining feature of the 1403 was that form feeds were controlled by a 12-column paper tape. By punching holes in the tape, you could quickly form feed to 12 different positions on your page. (This was useful for pre-printed forms.) The only problem was if you did a form feed and there wasn't a hole in that column in the paper tape, the printer would feed at high speed through the entire box of paper without stopping. (The 1403 used a hydraulic motor for high-speed form feeds. If you see hydraulic fluid under the printer at the Computer History Museum, that's why.)