[GreenKeys] More recent use of punch hole tape

[steve bennett]

 Jim,
  That's a great story.At the CNC machine shop where my uncle and I worked the machine operatorswere not supposed to do any programming. That job was for the engineers in the office.Well there were no engineers on night shift so when a tape had errors the operators would editthe program on the machine to fix it. Operators eventually became better programmers than the engineers.There were times when the operator would fix an error and inform the dayshift engineers about the errorand the next time the job needed to be run they'd get a tape from the engineers with the same errorand have to fix it themselves again!
-Steve
    On Monday, April 5, 2021, 06:54:27 PM EDT, Jim Haynes <jhhaynes at earthlink.net> wrote:  
 
 This isn't more recent, but a fun old war story.  Back in the 1960s
I worked at G.E. Computer Dept. in Phoenix.  The front panels for our
computers were made on CNC machines.  The CNC tapes were prepared by
the drafting department.  Two of my colleagues had designed a new
machine and had the first prototype to build.  The front panel came
out as intended except for an extra hole.  So they went back to the
drafting department to have a new CNC tape made.  This time the extra
hole was still there but in a different place.  I don't remember how
many times they tried to get it right, but eventually the extra hole
moved to the edge of the panel where the metal was folded down and
it wouldn't show, so they left it at that.


     ---

     "Ya can argue all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was."
     "No it ain't! No it ain't!  But ya gotta know the territory."
         Meredith Willson, The Music Man
  
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