Years ago, a Chicago firm (Data something?) that leased out computer
time had a bunch of those chain printers on their second story floor.
Those things weight a significant fraction of a ton.
One night, the printer hammers got in rythm by accident. A lot of jobs
were being printed. The natural frequency of the building was met, and
they started dancing across the floor. By the time the jobs were stopped,
or all the cables ripped, the printers had ended up in the corner of the
building. I understand some cracks appeared in brickwork.
This was relayed to me by a computer class professor in '74.
On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, Civileme wrote:
> Alex V Flinsch wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 14 Mar 2000, you wrote:
> > > what about a paper tape reader ;) I used to have to butterfly those
> > > damed paper tapes in the navy what fun that was ;)
> > >
> >
> > Nasty things those were. Especially if you were ever stupid enough to
> > brush a finger against a running tape. Paper cut from hell.
> >
> > --
> > Alex
> > (Go easy on me, I'm a COBOL programmer in real life)
>
>
> And how about the IBM 650? 80 registers and a recirc paper tape
> memory. The quintessential stored program computer. (Better
> than rewiring).
>
> Of course, I do remember rewiring one of those chain printers
> (the 1403, I believe) to chug away for a couple of hours to give
> me the first couple of coefficients for a Fourier transform, but
> I didn't have to do that, just did it for kicks.
