The Last of the Punch Card Programmers

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.'"

Comments

Hard to believe

[mangu]

There's something more that the article did not mention. It's not as if 19th century technology has been forgotten already.

If there is a market for it, you can be sure someone will build a modern machine to do it better, faster, and cheaper than those old machines do.

Re:Hard to believe

[Colin Smith]

If there is a market for it.

Well, that's the key isn't it. You have to have a market which understands and cares about quality. So far, there isn't really any evidence for that. The evidence is generally for faster/cheaper.

What market exists for quality is only sufficient to sustain some old 19th century technologies.
 

Re:Hard to believe

[MoonBuggy]

The article mentions exactly that - they say that the modern computer driven machines don't produce lace of the same quality.

I don't doubt that we could build modern machines to emulate the Victorian ones perfectly, but it's quite possibly cheaper to just keep the old ones going for such a niche product, especially when the current computer-driven machines apparently make lace 'good enough' for most purposes.

Re:Hard to believe

[Anonymous Coward]

i work in the metalworking trade, and many times an old screw machine can do a run of parts so much more efficiently than a cnc machine that it is used instead.

Re:Hard to believe

[ScrewMaster]

i work in the metalworking trade, and many times an old screw machine can do a run of parts so much more efficiently than a cnc machine that it is used instead.

Well, if you mean by "screw machine" a machine that makes screws, well, generally they literally stamp fasteners from spools of metal wire. Much faster and more efficient than trying to machine such parts ... that would be hideously slow in comparison.

Re:Hard to believe

[vlm]

Well, if you mean by "screw machine" a machine that makes screws, well, generally they literally stamp fasteners from spools of metal wire. Much faster and more efficient than trying to machine such parts ... that would be hideously slow in comparison.

Not a stamper. Think of a metal lathe, then porcupine it with multiple cutting tools and power feeds, to get a turret lathe. Then add even more clockwork/gearing and it can make multiple parts pretty much hands off, and you got a screw machine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw_machine

All that clockwork/gearing is complicated as heck to modify compared to feeding a new gcode file into a CNC. However, being hyper-specialized, if you don't need a slow precisely controlled negative X-axis movement or whatever, a screw machine probably has a big ole high tension spring that moves "instantly" vs the CNC slowly methodically and precisely crawling neg x-axis.

As far as hideously slow, you'd be surprised even in ancient history what a couple horsepower and sharp cutting/forming tools can do...

Re:Hard to believe

[vlm]

ASIC vs generic CPU analogy FTW!

More like discrete logic chips vs FPGA

Re:Hard to believe

[Sarten-X]

So its a binary data format battle.

From what (little) I understand of the machines in the article, it seems the new machines have different capabilities than the old ones. In the pursuit of speed, the new machines lack the ability to make designs that are as intricate as the old ones can. While they're still just "lace" to the untrained eye, the old style is capable of producing a better product.

Compare board games of the 1950's-1970's with games of today: There are many cases where plastic pieces have been replaced with printed cardboard. Sure, the game's the same, but it's not the same quality.

The best computer example I can come up with is Pentium chips. They're faster than the old 486s, but not quite as good. Perhaps in time new lace machines will have both speed and ability, but I don't know enough about lace to predict anything.

Re:Hard to believe

[ScrewMaster]

Not a stamper. Think of a metal lathe, then porcupine it with multiple cutting tools and power feeds, to get a turret lathe. Then add even more clockwork/gearing and it can make multiple parts pretty much hands off, and you got a screw machine.

Okay. I've seen equipment like that, but the screw machines I'm familiar with (I did a lot of data acquisition work in the fastener industry, many moons ago) were basically large solenoid-operated stamping machines. Rows and rows of the things, all thumping out about three or four parts per second. They had separate dies to form the various parts of the fastener, and were fed by large spools of metal wire (steel, brass, whatever.) They were also very loud, as I remember, although not anywhere near what I experienced in a some automotive stamping plants. Earplugs for the win.

These were mostly self-tapping parts (drill screws and the like) and the systems I developed measured various attributes such as drill time, peak and tapping torque values, end-load, and so forth. This was mostly for statistical process control purposes, although I did a number of laboratory test systems as well. Those were used for design testing, as well as assessing performance of competitors' parts.

Re:Hard to believe

[hey!]

This reminds me of the most fascinating lecture by a bad speaker I've ever heard. It was a by a cognitive therapist on the topic of "Willpower". He had what I thought was an interesting point: there are other ways to conceptualize self-discipline than in terms of willpower. He argued that it is more useful to look at what we call willpower as a matter of scope: the universe of outcomes we consider when we make a decision. There is the dimension of time: if I buy the cheap alternative now, in the short term I have the widget I need and more money in my pocket. In the long term I may have to keep buying that widget over and over again. There is a social dimension. If I make a selfish decision, I undermine people around me upon whom I depend. I think one aspect of contemporary culture is a pressure to narrow the scope of our decisions. We are trained by big box stores to go to the store with the lowest advertised entry price and walk out on our first visit having made a purchase. If that purchase is cheesy enough, we'll be back again soon for a replacement. Our attention is saturated with distractions and exhortations to act now because the clock is ticking on a low price for a purchase we probably shouldn't make in the first place.

We've been trained, I think, not to buy quality for *pragmatic* reasons. Instead, quality is a *fashion statement*. People will will drop several thousand dollars on a Rolex watch that doesn't keep any better time than a $30 watch with a Japanese quartz movement, because of the vast amount of labor and craftsmanship lavished on the inferior technology to bring it up to scratch. As it happens, I don't condemn the quality as fashion statement phenomenon. Arguably it is entirely rational to make top quality lace using 19th century tech. What better place to make a fashion statement than in fashion? There is a certain charm to displaying an elaborate textile created on a authentic period technology. Likewise there's a charm to having a watch (which is after all jewelry) with an exhibition back that lets you show off the complex automatic movement. I do worry about the lack of pragmatic concern for quality.

As an environmentalist I believe one of the best ways to reduce human impact on the Earth while improving human lives is to focus on pragmatic quality. Buying quality is even better than recycling. It's actually better for the planet to drop a couple thousand dollars on an office chair that will look like new in twenty years, than to buy five or six cheap chairs over the years that fall apart. That's true even if you recycle the junk chairs. In the meantime you're a lot more comfortable. Environmentalism doesn't necessarily mean wearing a hair shirt, although buying the very best may not always be possible with one's immediate means.

In any case, getting back to this speaker, he was extremely insightful, but spoke in a very slow monotone with lots of "umms" and "errs" that made it very difficult to follow him. The effect is hypnotic. I have the lecture on my iPod, and play it when I have difficulty sleeping. The insights in it are enough to capture my attention, but the delivery has me nodding off within a few minutes.

Re:Hard to believe

[Felgerkarb]

Manufactured lace and embroidery was my family's business, for many many years. These machines were run by large spools of punched paper tape. My father and my uncle designed and created an early CAD system, and built machines that would create punch tape from the computerized design.

Modern machines are now being built that are run directly from computers, but I'd say, given that these are huge expensive machines that are often resold and moved to new locations rather than bought new, the majority still run on paper tape.

The issue of quality isn't directly related to the machines being computer-driven. The quality depends on the care of the designer, the 'stitch count' or density, and quality of thread, etc. As with many manufactured goods, you can get lace for less money if you accept lower quality. No surprise there.

I assume the computer-driven machines would let an operator change the stitch count. These days, there are few people (in the West anyway) who know how to create a 'punching' as it is called, and fewer who are interested in learning. Strangely, the remnant of my father's business is just starting to get orders from Asia, so maybe 'Free Trade' is finally coming around to the point where manufacturing costs in the US are competitive with Asia in this regard, but there really is no one ready or willing to meet the manufacturing demand if it ever really comes back. You can probably ditto this sentiment for US shoe manufacturing, furniture, etc.

Re:Hard to believe

[timeOday]

Hmm, I was about to speculate the opposite - the new robotic stuff is probably too perfect, lacking the flaws that we think of as craftsmanship or authenticity. Like how women don't want man-made diamonds even though the only difference is they're flawless. And just like audiophiles who stick to LPs and vacuum tubes despite all evidence of their inferiority because, hey, what kind of enthusiast am I if I use the same equipment as everybody else?

Re:Hard to believe

[falconwolf]

These days, there are few people (in the West anyway) who know how to create a 'punching' as it is called, and fewer who are interested in learning.

TFA mentions this, "What do young people want to come into this trade for, especially at the manufacturing end - because it's so dirty, you know". Yet there are young people getting into it and Etsy provides them a sells outlet.

Strangely, the remnant of my father's business is just starting to get orders from Asia, so maybe 'Free Trade' is finally coming around to the point where manufacturing costs in the US are competitive with Asia in this regard

Free trade does that, as there's more trade people demand more pay from their employers. China is seeing more suicides, which is going too far, because employers won't give them raises they demand, though employers are giving some raises. China's middle class is rising afterall and there are now 64 Chinese billionaires on Forbes list. The same is seen in India. Free Trade raises everybody's boat.

Of course China doesn't have free trade, the Chinese currency isn't allowed to float, but trade is more open there now than it has been.

Falcon

Re:Hard to believe

[rolfwind]

As an environmentalist I believe one of the best ways to reduce human impact on the Earth while improving human lives is to focus on pragmatic quality. Buying quality is even better than recycling. It's actually better for the planet to drop a couple thousand dollars on an office chair that will look like new in twenty years, than to buy five or six cheap chairs over the years that fall apart. That's true even if you recycle the junk chairs. In the meantime you're a lot more comfortable. Environmentalism doesn't necessarily mean wearing a hair shirt, although buying the very best may not always be possible with one's immediate means.

I would caution against judging quality purely by the price tag. Sure, you're not going to get quality at the $1 store. OTOH, I have owned several recent model Mercedes in my life and the car I'm most happy with as far as reliability is concerned is my current Honda Civic. And it cost 1/3 of the amount new compared to the Mercedes. Mercedes, especially the diesels in the 1980s, were rock solid until they started getting too many electronics in them. Always electrical problems, which can be as expensive to fix as any drivetrain problem. Those specific models I owned were not exactly fashion statements either, just lower end pragmatic cars.

Imo, from overall buying experience, pragmatic qualities tends to correlate with price under the bottom half or third of the industry price range depending on the product, and fluctuate wildly thereafter.

As another example, 30 years ago, Ikea made really crappy Kitchen cabinets. Absolute garbage. Doors would loosen and tilt after several weeks of use and using a screwdriver to tighten it up fixed it for a day or two tops (many big box stores still sell these crappy systems). Wanted quality cabinets, you had to get them custom built. These days, the metal hardware was redesigned and dramatically improved on the better and more expensive Ikea cabinets so not everything comes loose in 5 minutes and are actually better than custom built for a fraction of the price in terms of durability and I'd even venture looks in many cases.

What price generally guarantees you is that the manufacturer can turn to a certain level of raw material and amount of processing/labor involved and still turn a profit. What is does not is that they will crank up the level of raw material/processing, nor that they will actually design it well.

Re:Hard to believe

[plover]

Screw machines are indeed awesome, once they're set up properly. Watching them run is like watching a mechanical ballet. And for what they do, they can be a cheap way to do it. A CNC machining center ties up half a million dollars of electronics and servos but it gets you producing parts after only a few hours to set up the machine. A six spindle mechanical screw machine takes about 40 hours to get properly set up, but it ties up a much cheaper machine while it runs.

There are a lot of problems with screw machines. The biggest is setting them up properly. You've got to get the speeds and feeds just right (which means a big inventory of cams), your tooling has to be rigid, is often custom, and you don't get all the cool benefits of CNC like automated broken tool replacement. You need a skilled operator who knows how to set them up and keep them running. They're not as flexible either: some operations (like peck drilling) are more difficult, and may require custom cut cams or expensive tool attachments. The big advantage is the run-time cost of the screw machine is much lower. And they're efficient: a multiple spindle screw machine can turn out parts four or five times faster than a single tool CNC machine.

It really depends on the lot size and on the operations to the parts to be made. If you're producing lots of small runs of intricate parts, the flexibility of the CNC machine will make it cheaper since you spend less time setting it up. If you're producing giant runs of identical simple parts over a long period of time, a screw machine will have much lower operational costs.

I worked in the 1980s at a shop that had a dozen multiple spindle screw machines, and one of my tasks was developing a screw machine estimating program. The primary problems we faced then were retaining the skilled operators, and the fairly low efficiency of the machines due to constant maintenance issues (tool sharpening, quality control, etc.) By the year 2000 the owner had sold off the last of the multiple spindle machines in favor of all CNC gear. The mechanical beasts simply weren't as profitable for the bulk of his work, which was primarily short runs. Long runs had already moved overseas.

Re:Hard to believe

[plover]

A "screw machine" is the name of an automated lathe, and while they can certainly produce screws, they're often used to make all kinds of cylindrical metal parts. They are not limited to making just screws. We used them to make everything from locomotive fuel injectors to hex-socketed screwdriver shafts.

We also made plenty of screw-threaded items, but never just ordinary "raw" screws. Other, simpler machines, such as the ones you described, had long ago taken over that task.

Re:Hard to believe

[Faerunner]

No, the "diamond thing" is nothing more than a fantasy spread by De Beers and friends to turn a tidy profit from exploiting diamond mines in Africa. Where did you pull this "social test" BS? 100 years ago nobody gave a shit about diamond rings. Search "De Beers Diamond Ad campaign". There are plenty of sources for this.

Women want "real" diamonds because that's what the media tells them they should love. Something "real", not "fake" (yes, I know they're real diamonds. Don't get me started on the masses' lack of chemistry skill) - A Diamond is Forever!(tm) but a "lab diamond" seems to represent an artificial love (as if the real thing doesn't!). The sacrifice of buying a diamond says only that the man handing it to you is thoughtful enough to buy into the best marketing scheme ever conceived.

Mine bought me a small sapphire which I helped to pick out and love dearly because it represents a lot more than his determination to provide me with what is probably the most expensive status symbol I'll ever have, right at the beginning of the relationship (once you've blown 3k on a single ring, it sets quite the precedent for other gifts!)... it tells me he cares more about our long-term financial stability than about a colorless chunk of rock.

Re:Hard to believe

[tombeard]

The Sam Vimes "Boots" Theory of Economic Injustice runs thus:

At the time of Men at Arms, Samuel Vimes earnt thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he, Vimes, could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he, Vimes, would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars.

Therefore over a period of ten years, he, Vimes, might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet.

(http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Economic_Injustice)

Re:Deskilling 101

[Anonymous Coward]

What we really need is for people to RTFA before they comment.

better than unemployment

[Anonymous Coward]

Given how long I've been out of work, I'd take any offer of employment at this point. Punch cards would be swell.

CS Bachelor's degree and 20 years experience mean jack shit in this economy.

Re:better than unemployment

[negRo_slim]

If you have not made it to management

Spoken like a true fucktard.

Re:better than unemployment

[beelsebob]

And you sir, are exactly why we have so few good, experienced programmers out there. There's an inbuilt assumption that people can't possibly want to write code, and be good at it. If you haven't got to management in 20 years, you must suck, rather than being incredibly good at what you do, and enjoy it.

Re:better than unemployment

[MacGyver2210]

I like to code. I think it's a sort of digital puzzle - I've been doing it for decades now and I'm nowhere near tired of it. I will readily turn down promotion from my coding position because I have no desire to spend all day looking at other people's code and telling them how to do their job.

I also love old style electronic computers which have to be programmed by switches or - gasp! - punch cards. I think the fact that they were able to achieve the same computing 30+ years ago without all the modern technolo-crap is cool, and I feel like everyone who programs should know it at least a little bit.

Even if you program Java, C#, and all manner of simple managed code all your life, they're going to make you learn Assembly and Binary math if you go get a CS degree.

Get Off Their Lawns!

[TaoPhoenix]

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

Programmer?

[Kaz Kylheku]

Is it programming if the output is basically a copy of the program?

Or is it data entry?

To BBC's credit, nowhere does "program" appear in the original article.

Computer programming via punch cards is useful ...

[perpenso]

Punch cards can be a pretty useful educational tool. In the 1980s I had an intro to computer science class where we had to write our first programming assignment in fortran(*) using punch cards. Second and subsequent assignments would use terminals. The professor explained that doing so was terribly obsolete but that this experience would help us understand why some computer languages (fortran in particular) and some operating systems (including unix) are the way they are. He added that the deck of blank punch cards we would have to buy would also provide us with plenty of book marks for the rest of our years in college.

(*) Fortran was only used in this intro computer science class. This class was required for many engineering and science majors who were more likely to use fortran than computer science majors. Unexpectedly in the mid 1990s I actually used fortran as my company was contracted to move some chemistry software from mainframes to personal computers.

Business basics

[AliasMarlowe]

The evidence is generally for faster/cheaper.

Indeed. Business 101 teaches us that "cheap shit drives good shit out of the market" in a race to the bottom. Business 201 modifies this slightly by noting that statutory regulations and standards usually place a lower bound on how shitty stuff can get. MBA courses subsequently add an "unfortunately" to the latter observation.

Re:Business basics

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "cheap shit drives good shit out of the market" idea is not Business 101. It's nothing more than short-term thinking on display. It's short-term thinking that has sent our IT jobs offshore. It's short-term thinking that has sent the majority of our manufacturing jobs offshore. It's short-term thinking that lays off employees to create non-existent profits rather than engaging in more research and development to create more income through new or improved products.

It's short-term thinking that has sent so many jobs overseas that we have drastically reduced the buying power of our own economy and sent millions of people into long-term unemployment. You can call all this shit Business 101 all you want. I call it flat out stupidity.

Re:Business basics

[hitmark]

I wonder how much the "cheap shit" issue have to do with readily available credit.

With hard to obtain credit, one would see things as more of an investment and therefor try to get more out of each unit of currency.

But with cheap credit it is all to easy to just go "if it breaks, i'll just buy a new one".

And it's probably not helping that spare parts are more expensive. That is: if one buy the parts and try to assemble a second device, one can not match the price of the first, fully assembled, device.

Re:Business basics

[Totenglocke]

You blame it on businesses, but the only reason it sells is because the average person would rather buy a cheap POS than spend more money to get a quality product. I used to work retail and I can't count how many people would buy something just because "It's so cheap!" and I'm standing there trying not to say "It's so cheap because it's utter shit and only a moron would buy it".

Re:Business basics

[Znork]

It all depends on your frame of reference

Unfortunately, the frame of reference of several significant players in the system is decidedly mainly local. The theory of globalization you express works until you add fixed currencies, central banks acting on local variables in a global system and government + CB enforced borrowing on a local basis.

a great time for innovative companies to form and produce new goods

That certainly wouldn't hire local labour. Local labour growth will be limited to the kind of society for creative anachronism theme-park work mentioned in the article (or at the Federal Reserve).

That uncertainty rather than outsourcing is why the unemployment won't go down.

Lack of demand is why unemployment won't go down, and demand driven by credit is unlikely to recover any time soon. People have figured out that the state isn't going to save for them, their retirement schemes will probably be bankrupt by the time they need them, and their house isn't going to recover it's ATM function any time soon. With the last 20 years of artificially induced massive overspending there's a fairly severe economic hole to fill in before demand recovers to anywhere near baseline.

Re:Business basics

[complete loony]

Lack of demand is why unemployment won't go down, and demand driven by credit is unlikely to recover any time soon.

Bingo. Increasing demand creates jobs. Demand can be calculated by summing income (ie GDP) plus change in debt, if you borrow money and spend or invest it this increases demand. Therefore the change in demand can be calculated by measuring the change in GDP plus [change in [change in debt]]. So if you want to know what the employment situation will be like, look at the acceleration of the aggregate debt level. In the last year, total demand dropped about 17% in the US, so I wouldn't hold out much hope for employment getting any better in the near future.

Re:Computer programming via punch cards is useful

[ScrewMaster]

In the 1980s I had an intro to computer science class where we had to write our first programming assignment in fortran(*) using punch cards.

Back in the 1970's when I was in college, the first day of my first computer class the professor told us that "the keypunch machines are down the hall." I asked him, "uh, as in punch cards?" At that point I'd been hacking assembler code on microcomputers for a few years and doing real-world interfacing, and really wasn't interested in punch cards. Sure, had it been a one-time experience like you had, that would have been interesting. But an entire school year spent in front of a keypunch machine, submitting jobs to an IBM 370, when there were rooms full of 3270 terminals all over the place? No thanks. I dropped that class that afternoon.

Re:Computer programming via punch cards is useful

[perpenso]

At my university in the 1980s there were two "programming" degrees. The school of science offered Computer Science (CS) and the school of business offered Computer Information Systems (CIS). This is not standard nomenclature, at other universities CIS is from the school of mathematics or science. The CIS folks were still using punch cards for their COBOL programming. I knew a few folks who transferred to CS because of the requirement to use punch cards. Terminals were plentiful around campus but CIS wouldn't let people use them.

Figures

[Purity Of Essence]

Figures it would be a guy that loves lace.

Re:Computer programming via punch cards is useful

[gafisher]

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!

Job Security Expectations?

[gafisher]

John Leavers invented those machines in 1812 and they're still in use. If two hundred years isn't job security, I don't know what is!

Re:Computer programming via punch cards is useful

[trb]

UNIX was influenced by punched cards in a couple of ways. The 80-column line width went from punched cards to teletypes to early (pre-bitmapped) terminals, which were the input device for UNIX in those days. Also, UNIX was developed at Bell Labs research, but Programmer's Workbench was an important early Bell Labs (the development side, not the research side) version (today you'd call it a distro) of UNIX that focused on providing a tolerable front-end interface to several old punched-card batch systems. It gave people screen, editor, and hard disk instead of keypunch and punched cards, and you could automate your build process with shell and make instead instead of using card-reader and line-printer.

In those days, UNIX ran on machines that we would consider tiny today, and so it had small input buffers, which you might say it was influenced by the 80-column punched card, or perhaps just by the 32k bytes (or 64k or 128k, if you were rich) PDP-11 system memory size. These buffer size limits were in the kernel, but easier to see in the /bin utilities.

Re:Computer programming via punch cards is useful

[Anonymous Coward]

The level of calculator use depends on the level of the student - the number of times I've seen my students reach for a calculator for simple arithmetic (9 x 13) or similar worries me that they don't truly understand what they are doing. Much of the basic arithmetic helps inform the algebra usage in later classes, which is why things like long division are still relevant. I relented and allow non-symbolic manipulation calculators for my calc classes these days after a student pointed out that their cell phones meant they have a calculator permanently available. I also make a point of assigning a problem or two that the TI-89's choke on to explain why learning the techniques directly is important.

Re:Computer programming via punch cards is useful

[plover]

But an entire school year spent in front of a keypunch machine, submitting jobs to an IBM 370, when there were rooms full of 3270 terminals all over the place? No thanks. I dropped that class that afternoon.

I'd been programming on terminals for several years before college, and one of my first college classes required us to punch cards as well. I'll say it's worth the experience, once, but you did the right thing in avoiding a whole year of it.

In some respects, punch cards are to teaching programming as film is to teaching photography. The problem is that the cost of any operation is high (you had to wait hours for your results in the case of punch cards, just as film was very expensive) so you did things differently. You'd waste hours of time scouring your deck for syntax errors. Or you'd take only one photo of an interesting scene, saving those other 35 exposures for other interesting scenes.

With digital photography, you can take a dozen shots with different settings in hopes that one will turn out spectacular. With compilers being virtually instant, practices like test driven development are possible, where you write a test, bang out some code to pass it, then move on.

I always think it's good to know about the past, but that doesn't mean we should remain stuck living in it.