I don't think so. Alphas were an afterthought to numerics, and specials were an afterthought to alphas. In 1960's accounting data S's were much more common than slashes. There are lots of characters with adjacent punches, but I think it plausible that IBM avoided them for what it thought to be common characters.
Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Bill Godfrey Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 2:42 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Punched cards and character set If "S" was assigned the 0 and 2 rows because 0 and 1 were too close together, then why was "/" given rows 0 and 1? Does that punch a hole in this theory? GD&R Bill On Tue, 2 Jun 2020 14:30:52 -0700, Charles Mills wrote: >"Laced" (every hold punched) cards were an amusing bulletin board item. > >And yes, I believe I heard at the time @Jesse's premise as to why 'S' did not >use row 1. > >Actually, the alpha codes are as follow: > >A - I, row 12 plus rows 1 - 9 >J - R, row 11 plus rows 1 - 9 >S - Z, row 0 plus rows 2 - 9 > >So you see that if S used row 1 it would have had two adjacent rows punched, 0 >and 1. > >(The rows, from top to bottom, are 12, 11, 0 - 9.) > >Non-alphanumeric punches were fairly rare, and column binary was extremely >rare. > >Object code decks of course contained non-alphanumeric punches. The X'02' that >begins each (traditional) object code record, preceding ESD, TXT, RLD or END? >I still think of it as "12-2-9.") > >Charles > > >-----Original Message----- >From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On >Behalf Of Steve Smith >Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2020 2:07 PM >To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU >Subject: Re: Punched cards and character set > >That's plausible, I think. While there are plenty of adjacent punches in >the full 256-characters, I'm sure most cards were mostly alphanumeric only, >and it might pay to make them as strong as possible. I remember seeing >some cards that were punched in every position; those were very delicate, >and definitely couldn't survive a pass through a card reader, regardless of >the fact they had no validity at all. > >sas > >On Tue, Jun 2, 2020 at 4:55 PM Jesse 1 Robinson >wrote: > >> I haven't seen this mentioned. The punch card codes for letters went like >> this: >> >> A - I rows 1 - 9 >> J - R rows 1 - 9 >> S - Z rows 2 - 9 >> >> So why was S assigned to row 2 instead of row 1? The answer I was taught >> was that row 1 was too close to an adjacent location. The punching/reading >> devices and card stock of the day could not reliably handle punches that >> close together, so row 1 was skipped for the third alphabetic sequence. >> >> What's amusing is that this pattern was carried over to EBCDIC. The code >> for S likewise skips a possible combination: D9 to E2; 'E1' is not assigned >> to an alphabetic character. >> >> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
