As Jeff said earlier:
> As for the "mark-sense" reader... we had this grand plan to do grades on
> "mark-sense" cards.  The idea was to "print" class cards (one card per
> student, sorted by instructor by class), and let them pencil-in mark the
> corresponding grade for the student.  It was great in theory, but the
> "mark-sense" reader had much less than stellar performance and
> reliability (it sucked!), and having the "printed" cards burst on their
> perforations to yield the "card" left some rough edges which the reader
> really, really hated.  And it was slow as Christmas.  Heck, it was
> slower than Leap Year.  That lasted one semester, I think, and we went
> to OpScan forms instead (much better).  Much of this was a holdover from
> our old IBM grade processing days (which was on punched grade cards that
> were also fed to a unit-record device that read the marked grade and
> "punched" the result onto the card).  Some habits are hard to break :)

I'll take the hit for that one :)

Turns out you could print (at 8 LPI?) on continuous heavy stock available in
an IBM card format - all 80 columns - on an impact line printer. The card
reader (it hooked to a serial terminal port) used a photo sensor to read -
printed bars, pencil or ink all worked well.

Most (ex-IBM) shops had equipment to burst, de-collate and otherwise
mutilate continuous forms. So printing the cards, bursting and removing the
perforations (for the feed tractors) produced a deck of pre-printed cards,
and the process was really pretty easy.

Good theory, and it worked (I think for a few semesters). We wrote a really
simple program to read a deck and post the grades directly to the data base,
and it worked pretty well - especially since it avoided all user training
issues :)

A teacher could take their decks of cards to the business office and scan
them in - errors could be fixed on the spot. Not bad - but pretty slow, and
sometimes lines formed at the reader :)

The perforated edges -were- a problem. We wound up printing and bursting
them, then putting them in card trays (3000 cards per tray) and sanding the
long edges. It took a little explaining to get management to understand why
we needed to buy a dual action orbital sander with integrated vacuum pickup
in order to get grades to post :)

Sears had one for about $50 that did a great job - not sure where it wound
up. We had a good incentive to get the OpScan process developed quickly, and
it was indeed much better :)

In those days we were just staying ahead of the bleeding edge - we had a
small (but dedicated and very smart) staff and no money. Solutions had to be
quick and cheap (from the line: "you want good, fast and cheap? Pick two and
call me back!") For example, one office wanted a new system to record sales
of parking bumper stickers. We spent some hours "studying" their needs, then
presented them with a bound ledger book and a Bates numbering stamp - it
fulfilled -all- their stated requirements :)

Speaking of odd trivia in the old days - anybody remember "column 81" on a
standard IBM card and what it was used for?
-- 
Regards  --  Tony B. Shepherd  --  [log in to unmask]

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