Programmer Humor

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KB, MB, GB, and TB are all part of the metric system. What empirical measurements should we Free™️ Americans use for computer memory? (lemm.ee)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 158 points 3 months ago (3 children)

How about feet of IBM punch cards?

A 1 foot tall stack holds 1,647,360 bits of data if all 80 columns are used. If only 72 columns are used for data then it's 1,482,624 bits of data and the remaining columns can be used to number each card so they can be put back in order after the stack is dropped.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I like this because the amount of bits in a stack can vary depending on whose foot you use to measure, or the thickness of the card stock.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

IBM standard cards are one 48th of a barleycorn thick. I believe IBM measured from the 1932 Iowa Reference Barleycorn, now kept in the vault inside Mt Rushmore.

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