The Origin Of „Cobol in Computing"
- Thursday, 18 July 2013, 12:53 @ CEST
- Contributed by: Admin
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The first applications used adjustable boards with wires that basically connected the input signals to the output signals or transferred them into the accumulator (cpu). Rewiring was called „programming”.
While punched tape had a greatly free-format, the punched card introduced a strict fixed format and caused the „program” to group the data fields as records: a punched card was read as a complete unit or record, while punched tape could be infinite in length (very fragile and in practice the limit was a few meters). In those days computers were used in a most scientific way and the punched tape was king. Programs would read series of numbers (originating the term number crunching) and manipulate them. A stack was indispensable.