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The Last of the Punch Card Programmers

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday September 5, 2010 @04:04AM from the back-to-basics dept.

Peter Cus writes "Cluny Lace, an English lacemaking manufacturer, has reverted to 19th-Century Leavers machines in order to stay competitive. These 19th-Century machines use Jacquard punch cards. Ian Elm, thought to be the last of the card punchers, says young people don't want factory work: 'Younger people coming into a trade want a guarantee of a career out of it, and this is so uncertain.'"

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Re:Last of the posts! by causality · 2010-09-05 04:17 · Score: 1, Funny

No posts after this one, please.
Ok.

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It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Get Off Their Lawns! by TaoPhoenix · 2010-09-05 04:26 · Score: 4, Funny

They hand plant each blade of grass for that high quality finish!

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My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Figures by Purity+Of+Essence · 2010-09-05 06:03 · Score: 4, Funny

Figures it would be a guy that loves lace.

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+0 Meh
Re:Computer programming via punch cards is useful by gafisher · 2010-09-05 06:18 · Score: 5, Funny

I well remember punching decks of cards for my Computer Science classes, then "submitting" them to the guy behind the bank-teller window in the Mainframe Suite and waiting for my job to finish so another guy could hand me a thick stack of folded paper from the LinePrinter so I could see if my program had worked. I always got a laugh out of waiting an hour or more for my printout, which proclaimed on the second page that I had consumed .00058 seconds of CPU time -- talk about a responsive user interface!