To improve the punch card, we decided to divide the punch card in half length ways. Since we only need to store letters A-Z and some punctuation, we figured that would total about 36 characters (including space). So, we could store all 36 characters with different combinations of six. Basically, we're using an idea more similar to bytes, but with 6 instead of 8. What were originally called rows 12-3 and rows 4-9 will each now be rows 1-6. This way, our punch card would store twice as much data on the same space. So, for example we'll use 0 and 1 as not punched and punched.
000000= SPACE
000001= A
000010= B
000100= C
etc
000011= G
000110= H
etc
Finally, the last 9 combinations would be used for basic punctuation
. , ( ) - ? ! / *
For example:
111100= !
011111= /
111110= ?
111111= *
So, if the first and second columns read like this vertically:
001000000001 001000000000 it would say DAD
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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