Lozenge e-mails

Do you recall if that was because 40X folks already been using it for that purpose or because you thought that would be a good application for it?* Do you recall it being used as a total's indicator, per Dick's reference from Mackenzie text below?

Any thoughts on Dick's other question:
"The 1401 manual's Character Code Chart, p.170, indicates "BCD Code" for the column of binary encodings. But I don't think that's correct. The BCD for zero is 0000 (Mackenzie p.31), the 1401 zero is 1010 (8-2) which is BCDIC. So why does the 1401 manual state BCD?"

I've personally never warmed up to the term "BCD" ("Binary Coded Decimal") to describe the character set, as it only refers to encoding of decimal digits, not the alphabetic and special characters.

Hope all is going well. (I need to edit your transcripts of the 1401 oral history we did last year!! And bounce some more 1401 questions your way.)

- Robert

* I understand these Lozenge questions are trifling and minutiae; perhaps that's what makes them interesting. ;-) For those on cc list, I had been asking: "In the 40X accounting machine era, how was the Lozenge character actually used?" What struck me was the lack of the "+" sign from the accounting machine era (now I understand ;-). Lack of a "+" character sure gave grief to the FORTRAN developers! ;-)

More from Mackenzie --

If you're marking up the index of your copy the earlier quote was p.67, this quote is from p.99

"There is an aspect of human nature which surfaces in data processing. Experience has shown that if graphics are provided on a computing system, they will be used in one way or another by customers, even if they have no intrinsic meaning. The lozenge is an example. It has no intrinsic meaning but customers came to use it to signify things peculiar to their applications -- within applications, customers gave the lozenge a meaning. For example, in banking applications, the lozenge was frequently used on tabulation listings to indicate (to the customer) second level totals"

Those users had a reason for doing that. There were two common methods for identifying totals.

1) offset

     1.00
     1.00
        2.00 offset total

2) asterisk (each 407 counter had an "asterisk emitter" hub - when the counter was read-out an asterisk was emitted))

     1.00
     1.00
     2.00 * minor total

     5.00
     3.00
     8.00 * minor total
   10.00 ** intermediate total

   10.00 *** final total

Both methods consume print columns and the 407 only had 120 of them. So, for the "asterisk" method, using an otherwise available graphic, instead of **, for second level totals saved one print column for other uses.

dick w