The 1890 US Census and the history of punchcard computing [feat. Grant of 3blue1brown fame]

If you are ever in the Bay Area you should totally check out the Computer History Museum.

Bubbles Whiting - Using Punch Cards - Hollerith and IBM

Read more about the Hollerith Tabulator!

Ben Eater makes amazing videos about computing.

Buy the doubling sequence signed by Matt Parker and Grant Sanderson.

CORRECTIONS
- Nothing yet. Let me know if you spot anything!

Thanks to Jane Street who are the principle sponsor of my channel. They're amazing.

Thanks to my Patreon supports who do support these videos and make them possible. Here is a random subset:

Tracy Parry
Iain Kings
Maksym Borodin
Alex Hackman
James
Lasse T. Stendan
Samuel Ytterbrink
Sjoerd Wennekes
Cooper Jones
Piotr

Support my channel and I can make more videos:

Filming by Matt Parker
Editing by Michelle Martin
Music by Howard Carter
Design by Simon Wright

MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician

[feronanthus]

"Ben Eater has a computing channel" is the understatement of the year.

[Chancellor]

Oh sure, like there’s *any* chance this channel has crossover with train ticket enthusiasts...

[eumesmoeu]

I'll give my friends a bunch of abacus stones... it's the little things that count

[cristumang]

So happy that Matt Parker remembered James Grime when he saw the Little Professor

[jon]

11:50 As an undergraduate I had the opportunity to operate my university's mechanical differential analyzers. They are the only publically accessible, fully functional differential analyzers in the US (or at least they were when I was there). Very cool machine and beautifully elegant designs from a mathematical and engineering perspective.

[keios]

The abacus with a built in calculator is almost certainly from Japan, where for Reasons you'll often find purchases are added up by calculator, then your tax will be calculated by abacus. Or maybe the other way round, it's been a long time since I was last in Japan. I genuinely have no idea why, I just assume it's The Way Things Are Done and companies produce things to facilitate that.

[javajini]

Actually, the giant slide rule was used to teach students how to use it. The teacher would stand at the front of the class and do operations on the big slide rule while the students tried the same operation on their regular sized slide rule. They were still teaching how to use the slide rule that way when I was in high school (1969-1973). Thanks for the video!

[hlraeth]

When you're so into these sciences and maths that you become so happy when your favorite youtubers collab or crossovers.

[descuddlebat]

When you close your eyes, you can see Matt talk to a pi creature

[RegebroRepairs]

My favourite example of standards persistence involves punch cards.
See, in 1920 the not yet IBM company standardized all their punch cards (since the mergers presumably they had many different sizes). And the size they chose? Well, it was the size of standard US currency at the time, which in turn probably was dictated by the the paper making tools. In 1929, the currency got smaller, but punchcards remained the same. And then, much later, airlines wanted systems to print airline tickets and boarding passes automatically? Who did they ask? IBM naturally. Were IBM going to design new printers and mechanics? Of course not, they used the stuff they already had for punched cards. So airline tickets and boarding passes were the size of punched cards.


So today, when you go to an automated check-in box at the airport and it prints out your boarding pass, that's the same size that US currency was standardized to in 1869. That standard has lasted for 150 years, and over three different usages.

[meraxion]

Last semester, I worked on a project using population data from the US censuses 1850-2010, and seeing this "behind the scenes" video is definitely making me appreciate more the effort that went into creating the pdfs I was reading from.

[flymypg]

Yes! I did my first programming while in high school in 1972 using FORTRAN IV on an old school district IBM 1401 that had been "retired in place", as it would have cost IBM more to remove it than it was worth. We used punched cards, and I still have one of my program decks. We also had the upgraded control console that had a Selectric typewriter built into it, and a panel of blinkenlights where one could actually watch a program operating, and with experience could do simple debugging just by observing the panel.

The 1401 was an unusual beast formed from a combination of technologies, the main goal being to get away from using vacuum tubes ("valves" to those in the UK). Transistor circuits were used for logic, but were too expensive to use for memory. Even magnetic core was too expensive, as the 1401 was intended to be an "entry level" machine for its day. So a rotating magnetic drum was used as semi-permanent storage. Programs wrote temporary or intermediate values on the drum, and the were crafted to be perfectly timed to read that particular value back just when the drum had rotated around for it to be under the read heads. Well, the compiler did that: We didn't have to cope with it unless we had too many variables in our program. At the time, I thought it was a marvel that it worked at all, much less with so much reliability that it was still running flawlessly after years without any maintenance.

That experience guided the path of my life, leading me to get one of the first undergraduate degrees in Computer Engineering, and a sequence of wonderful jobs I've thoroughly enjoyed. I doubt I'll ever retire, at least not willingly: I'm having way too much fun!

Edit: Typos.

[peterdegelaen]

Oh, oh, oh. When I started my professional career in IT in 1981, we still had that very same card sorter in the data center. It was one of the oldest machines we had but it still did its job. We also had an IBM 2560 MFCM (Multi Function Card Machine): two card input hoppers and 5 card output bins; the two input hoppers made it possible to merge two card decks.


We also had a decollator (if anyone still knows what that is?). That one was used to separate the printed listings and the carbon between the different copies. I mention it because it was also old.


In the early nineties, I visited a similar museum in Boston, but I think that does not exist anymore. The funny thing is that in that museum, I found an old disk drive (IBM 3340) that came from our data center (in Belgium). The removable disk pack still had the label of our company on it. I read and wrote data from and to that very same disk pack!!!

[hamiltonianpathondodecahed]

That abacus was there to check if the calculations of the calculator were correct

[nymalous]

When I was a young boy, my dad worked for IBM. They still used punch-cards then, in fact, I think he still has some. ... I'm old.
18:50 That machine was used for twenty years and is still working today?! Man, they built them to last back then...

[vader]

There is a channel called CuriousMarc that is all about these old computers and calculators and he has a few videos about the exact IBM computer from the video where they do some real calculations and explain them in a lot more detail together with the people that restored them.

[hlraeth]

I just saw Ben Eater from the latest vid of Destin in SmarterEveryDay. I don't know but I feel so happy when I see them collaborating with each other.

[knights]

Infinity war is the most ambitious crossover.
Matt parker: hold my abacus

[marsgal]

I did first year computer science in 1978 on punched cards.

A few years ago I went to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney and saw an exhibition of techie stuff, including an Apple 1, an Alto and an Enigma. As part of a different display I got talking to one of the staff who showed me jacquard loom punched cards.

[outside]

Why is Grant such a God damn Disney prince