<story><title>The tyranny of the Hollerith punched card</title><url>http://pub.gajendra.net/2012/09/hollerith_tyranny</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lisper</author><text>The article has the causality backwards.  We don&amp;#x27;t use 80 characters because that&amp;#x27;s what the Hollerith card used, the Hollerith card used 80 characters because that&amp;#x27;s a good ergonomic width.  (Or, if you prefer, the Hollerith card &lt;i&gt;succeeded&lt;/i&gt; because it was a good ergonomic width.)&lt;p&gt;Coincidentally (or perhaps ironically) the article itself is formatted for ~80 characters per line, not because it&amp;#x27;s bound by the Hollerith card, but because 80 characters is a good ergonomic width.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kens</author><text>I researched Hollerith cards and 80-character lines in excessive detail while studying card sorters [1]. The Hollerith card is the root cause of 80-character lines, of course. Prior to 1928, Hollerith cards used round holes and 45 characters per card. IBM wanted to fit more data on a card and investigated two alternatives: binary coding so 90 characters could fit into 45 columns of holes, or rectangular holes which allowed narrower holes so 80 columns would fit. They chose the latter because it was more compatible with existing card sorting equipment, and the rest is history. Competitors used 90 column cards, but didn&amp;#x27;t achieve the same success as IBM. IBM later introduced 96-column cards, but they weren&amp;#x27;t as popular. Thus, it&amp;#x27;s just a historical accident that everyone uses 80 columns rather than 90 or 96. And 80 columns is used because that&amp;#x27;s how many could fit on a punched card the size of obsolete US currency. Note that ergonomics has nothing to do with the success of 80 columns: for the most part these cards held accounting data, not program code or text. (I wrote an article covering this in great detail but haven&amp;#x27;t posted it to my blog yet; hopefully I&amp;#x27;ll get it out soon.)&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.righto.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;inside-card-sorters-1920s-data.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.righto.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;inside-card-sorters-1920s-data...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The tyranny of the Hollerith punched card</title><url>http://pub.gajendra.net/2012/09/hollerith_tyranny</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lisper</author><text>The article has the causality backwards.  We don&amp;#x27;t use 80 characters because that&amp;#x27;s what the Hollerith card used, the Hollerith card used 80 characters because that&amp;#x27;s a good ergonomic width.  (Or, if you prefer, the Hollerith card &lt;i&gt;succeeded&lt;/i&gt; because it was a good ergonomic width.)&lt;p&gt;Coincidentally (or perhaps ironically) the article itself is formatted for ~80 characters per line, not because it&amp;#x27;s bound by the Hollerith card, but because 80 characters is a good ergonomic width.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sevensor</author><text>I agree, and I was thinking the same thing as I read the article.  Even so, I&amp;#x27;m glad we&amp;#x27;re talking about history.  79 or 81 characters would be pretty much the same.  You have to know the history to understand why 80 is a magic number.&lt;p&gt;And why &lt;i&gt;does&lt;/i&gt; my terminal window have a baud rate?  Why is it so slow?</text></comment>