That brings back memories of a Decision Data printer we had at my first job. Instead of a belt or chain it had a drum that rotated vertically; when it printed a full line of the same character the sound of 132 hammers firing simultaneously made one think a semi had hit the building.
If anybody wants to watch a fictionalized account of a 1960s advertising agency getting their first IBM 360, check out the fourth episode of season seven of Mad Men. A little bit of a synopsis is here.
It’s stunts like that (plus complete ignorance of carriage control) that cause the Purdue operators to install a kill switch on carriage control operation - forcing everything to single space.
Another trick was:
DO 1 to 1000
NewPage
END DO
My first job (operator) still had a 1403 printer - it actually used a loop of paper tape to control interpretations of CC commands. We saw fit to have a tape with every CC command defaulted to single space. It was kept close by.
I used to have, among many others, two National Geographic issues about a decade apart, each of them having a major article on computers. In the earlier one, which was from around 1972 if memory serves, a photo depicted the installation of a particular model mainframe, which escapes me now. Another pic showed a fanfold printout of some Manhattan job listings, with a guy holding it up all proud and everything, as one who would suggest it was a technological miracle of the age. (To be fair, considering how tedious it must have been to code using a cardpunch, it probably was at that.) The later article showed the same machine being removed. I wish to hell I hadn’t lost both magazines, and I don’t know how it happened. I never intended to get rid of them.
We had somewhat self service keypunch/card reader/line printer rooms in my student days. It was always amusing to watch the results when people stacked their papers/books/etc. on top of one of the line printers. Why? the entire top of the printer swung open when it ran out of paper, dumping everything on top unceremoniously onto the floor :eek: .
Some nice people occasionally warned others not to do that. I was even more of an obnoxious soul back then than I am now 
so I just watched.
I think it was the 3211 which had that rather annoying habit - it did get the operator’s attention, but, sitting next to another printer, it was the logical place on which to place the other printer’s output for bursting.
You only left one stack on that…
Except for print speed, this cheap laptop out-classes the S370-168, and probably a 3033…
And one more level of joke, C itself was named after B which was a stripped down version of BCPL, a language which ran on Multics and which I used heavily in grad school.
I mentioned upthread my first experience with a 360.
The contrast with what you get today…
Yesterday I bought a name-brand tablet for very little money for my sister-in-law. (Shhh, don’t tell her.) I’m setting it up now and loading it with apps and crap since she is far from computer savvy and doesn’t have WiFi at home.
Good … freakin’ grief. This is amazing. It’s not just that it is incredibly fast and powerful. But that it’s for so little money. Even a year ago this would have cost twice as much.
The change in technology I’ve seen in the last 45 years continues to astound me.
Heh. I took a programming class in college. Pascal. Punch cards. 1979. It was way high tech. The data center communicated with the programming center via infrared light. If it was snowing, it shut down the signal. High tech for it’s time. But I got frustrated and dropped computers at the time. Hated it. Never again.
Rather drive a truck.
Yesterday, I updated to SQL server 2012 SSMS on my work machine so that I can work with the GIS DB’s on our servers. Pain in the ass.
Things are good. But sometimes…