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<blockquote data-quote="Bob Blaylock" data-source="post: 586900" data-attributes="member: 16749">Second Entry:&nbsp; As long as I can remember, my father had this tie clip, with this metal plate attached to it.&nbsp; Somewhere during my childhood, I got the idea that this was his name represented in some punchcard code.&nbsp; After my father passed away near the end of 2008, this came into my possession.&nbsp; I looked at it, and realized that there were a lot more bits on it than it would take to represent his name.&nbsp; Curious about what this really was, I started doing some online searching for information about punchcards and punchcard codes.&nbsp; What I ultimately learned is that this is not a punchcard code at all, but a part of a 1950s-vintage IBM 026 keypunch machine.&nbsp; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keypunch#IBM_024.2C_026_Card_Punches" target="_blank">The Wikipedia article on “keypunch”</a> contained a picture of a plate just like this one, with the exact same bit pattern on it, and an explanation of it's function.&nbsp; It's basically, a crude form of a character-generator ROM, used to specify which pins should fire in a 5×7 matrix printhead to print any given character on the card, above the column punched to represent that character.[ATTACH]232258[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Bob Blaylock, post: 586900, member: 16749"] Second Entry: As long as I can remember, my father had this tie clip, with this metal plate attached to it. Somewhere during my childhood, I got the idea that this was his name represented in some punchcard code. After my father passed away near the end of 2008, this came into my possession. I looked at it, and realized that there were a lot more bits on it than it would take to represent his name. Curious about what this really was, I started doing some online searching for information about punchcards and punchcard codes. What I ultimately learned is that this is not a punchcard code at all, but a part of a 1950s-vintage IBM 026 keypunch machine. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keypunch#IBM_024.2C_026_Card_Punches]The Wikipedia article on “keypunch”[/url] contained a picture of a plate just like this one, with the exact same bit pattern on it, and an explanation of it's function. It's basically, a crude form of a character-generator ROM, used to specify which pins should fire in a 5×7 matrix printhead to print any given character on the card, above the column punched to represent that character. [ATTACH=CONFIG]232258._xfImport[/ATTACH] [/QUOTE]

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