From: Benjamin.Kubelsky@verizon.net   
      
   On 2/6/2015 6:28 PM, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:   
   > In the Winter 2014 Classic Trains, pg 44, there is a photo of a station   
   operator.  In the background there is an IBM 029 keypunch (maybe a 129).  The   
   caption says the picture is form the early 1980s, which is quite late for the   
   keypunch era; more were    
   replaced by key-disk machines by then.   
      
   When I took my first computer class at UCLA, about 1982, our first   
   programming assignment (a program to add two numbers in the PL/C   
   language) was on punch cards. At that time, they still sold cards in   
   vending machines in the computer labs, but they were clearly on the way   
   out.   
      
   That fist assignment was more to get the idea and experience, as part of   
   the class dealt with the history of computing. Subsequent programming   
   was done at online dumb terminals, being stored in mainframe disk drives.   
      
   Los Angeles County used punch cards for voting from sometime in the   
   early 1960s (or before) until after the "hanging chad" nonsense in 2000.   
   Now they use "ink-a-vote" which is basically a Scan-tron.   
      
      
   Cheers,   
      
   Dave   
      
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