Well at least "slide rule accuracy" taught a few engineering bozos a little about round-off errors and the pitfalls of using too few digits in a calculation.  Too many folks--including many so-called scientists--think that "the number came from the computer, so it must be accurate". Aaaarrrggggghhhhhhh!

-mj-

Gilbert T. Gutierrez, Jr. wrote: 
http://georgetoft.com/georgeslaw.shtml
 From my college days . . .

"Hey, Grampa, tell us the story about 80 column punch cards, and why a 
good rubber band was your best friend. You mean you couldn't just talk 
to the computer?"

"Well, Sonny, columns 1-5 were for your numeric labels. A 'C' in column 
6 meant it was a continuation from the previous line, and your code went 
in columns 7-72. Columns 73-80 were your card sequence number and it was 
optional. Nobody liked to put numbers there because if we moved a block 
of code, we would have to resequence the cards. Screw that - just make 
sure you had a good rubber band, and another one as a backup in case the 
first one broke. Gives you a whole new meaning of data backup, huh."

"Grampa, what was the deal with column 1 on the printer?"

"Oh, yeah. Put a 1 in column 1 and the printer won't advance. Print 
about 10 lines with this:
1====================================================
and all of the print wheels on the line printer would line up and the 
strikers would synchronize and go WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP and shake the whole 
computer center. Heh, heh, heh. The computer operators would jump out of 
their skin - they definitely knew when I ran a job."

"Grampa, what's a line printer?"
    

Nice reminiscing guys.  Laugh out loud!  The next thing you guys are going
to start talking about is how Jesus and his disciples signed your high
school yearbook.  My parents used those pesky cards in engineering school
and some device called the slide rule???  ;)

Gilbert 

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