Ma Qianzhu has lost a lot of hair since he became the Secretary of State of the "most powerful Administration Council since D-Day". His schedule is measured in minutes. It is a great "grace" to squeeze out two hours to attend the meeting.
Feng Nuo knew that he had "scratched an itch".
In order to fully explain his ideas and plans, although conditions did not allow him to make a glass plate PPT, he still specially produced "outline" and "materials". The former is for leaders to read the outline; the latter is for details.
, leaders can read it carefully if they are interested.
As for the other participants, they are all experts and only need to provide a simple technical explanation.
The meeting was held in the conference room of the Government Affairs Council. Feng Nuo first introduced his technical ideas and the various technical solutions currently being discussed, and then got to the point.
"Why use punched cards? In fact, it is very clear. It is to solve the three major difficulties in data processing. First, there are too many document sizes and shapes; second, there are too many transactions recorded on a single document; third, the document records data
There are too many forms and methods. In other words, it’s a matter of standardization.”
Feng Nuo paused for a while to calm down his nervousness, feeling that his tone was a bit high. He didn't expect that Yang Yun actually mentioned this punch card computer system in the report, and even lured the big boss Du Gong.
Yu. Feng Nuo is very clear about the importance of the leader's visit to the cause. This is not just a matter of showing one's face in front of the leader. Even if the leader leaves without saying a word, it will have a very important impact on the future of the project.
The promotion effect is the same as asking the leader to write a letter when doing business in the past. This opportunity must be seized.
A seminar on the establishment of a punched card computer has been held, and the participants and the general plan have been basically determined. This meeting is mainly a discussion of the "punched card" itself. Because this punched card computer is different from a hand-cranked computer, the data must first be determined
The carrier - the specifications and various standards of the punched card can be used for the next step of mechanical design. The Senate has no physical objects to imitate, and can only make inferences based on the data and the card itself. Therefore, the first thing in the project is
Determine the standards for punched cards.
Of course, Feng Nuo tried his best to get the task of being in charge of this area. He had already done a lot of research and was a representative of the Planning Institute, but the veterans who were engaged in machinery and electricity were not very interested in this matter.
"Therefore, we must determine the punched card specifications from the beginning, at least in all applications in the civilian field. There are 45-column, 80-column, 90-column and other types of punched cards, but the most common ones were also first used in the United States in 1890.
The 'Hollerith' punched card used in the census was later commonly known as the 'IBM card'. The card was made of sturdy and durable card stock and printed with 10 rows x 80 columns of numbers, with the numbers in each row ranging from 0-
9. In addition, there are two rows of punch holes, 11 and 12, on the card, but there are no printed marks. Row 11 is also called row X, and row 12 is also called row Y. Their positions are actually above the row of numbers. These two rows, plus
Row 0, also known as the 'Three Rows Area' or the 'High Area'."
"The period of application of punched cards in China was relatively short, and the industry was relatively limited. Therefore, the standard of punched cards completely copied the standards of IBM cards. The manufacturing standards are as follows: notched rectangular card, the horizontal direction is the long side, the length is 187.32 mm, the error
No more than 0.12 mm; the vertical direction is the short side, the length is 82.55 mm, the error does not exceed 0.18 mm; the thickness is 0.175 mm, the error does not exceed 0.005 mm. The paper fiber direction should be the horizontal direction. The non-straightness tolerance of each side is 0.08 mm
, the non-parallelism tolerance of each corresponding side is 0.08 mm, the non-perpendicularity tolerance of two adjacent sides does not exceed 5 minutes, and the included angle of the missing corner is 60 degrees. Please check the information distributed."
"Then there are the punching specifications. The card reference straight line
A straight line perpendicular to
.The shape of the perforation is rectangular, the center of the hole is located at the intersection of the row and the column, the long side is parallel to Y, the short side is parallel to
The minimum edge distance of each code hole should be greater than 0.51 mm, and the error between the hole center line and the row and column standard line should be less than 0.25 mm."
The meeting place was quiet, and the participants were probably wondering whether they could build equipment that could read and punch such precise cards. What Von Nuo was thinking about was that he forgot to invite people from the paper factory to participate in the discussion.
It is very difficult to produce paper that meets the specifications. If you want to climb up the technology tree, there will be pitfalls at every step. However, he was prepared and continued:
"This is a punched card standard released domestically in the late 1970s. Its manufacturing accuracy was of course developed to meet the requirements of the punched card computer system's processing speed of 1,000 to 2,000 cards per minute at that time. We currently do not have a punched card computer system.
Early card standards, but it is certain that the technology of the early 20th century could not meet such accuracy standards. In fact, in a document from the 1950s, the size of punched cards was simply introduced as 18.6 cm x 8.3 cm. Therefore,
The accuracy and error standards of punch cards suitable for our homemade equipment still need to be further explored during development."
"Each column of the punched card can be used to record one character, including numbers from 0 to 9 and 26 English letters, as well as several symbols, such as equal signs, percent signs, etc. Each column can record one character, and the entire card can record a total of
80 characters."
"Characters are realized by punching. If a column wants to express a number, directly punch holes in the corresponding rows from row 0 to row 9. If a column wants to express an English letter, the high area and the number area need to be punched at the same time. Usually
The value of this column will also be printed at the top for reference. Please refer to Appendix 2 of the information for the specific plan."
Each column of the punched card can store 1 English letter. The solution is: 12-1 A 11-1 J 0-1 / 12-2 B 11-2 K 0-2 S 12-3 C 11-3 L 0
-3 T 12-4 D 11-4 M 0-4 U 12-5 E 11-5 N 0-5 V 12-6 F 11-6 O 0-6 W 12-7 G 11-7 P 0-7
X 12-8 H 11-8 Q 0-8 Y 12-9 I 11-9 R 0-9 Z
"Punch holes in the three-line area, and punch holes in the number lines 1-9. There are 3x9=27 solutions. Excluding the special symbol 'slash' at the 0-1 position, it can represent exactly 26 letters. What's interesting is that the reason why
0-1 is used to represent the slash because in the whole scheme, only the two holes of this code are closest to each other, and the technical implementation is difficult. In addition, other special symbols can use several schemes with 3 holes in each column.
Solution. Hollerith’s code only uses hole No. 8 as the matching hole, but this also reveals that 3-hole coding is technically possible.”
"The reason why 3-hole coding is mentioned is to consider the problem of Chinese coding."
At this time, there were many whispers in the venue. Chinese encoding was a major problem in the Senate's application of punched cards. At that time, punched card computers were not produced in China, and their uses were not widespread. There was actually no standard Chinese encoding method.
Compared with the data storage carriers familiar to the elders, the capacity of punched cards is pitifully small. Each 18.7x8.3 card can only store 80 characters, which are only English letters. If it is for government or commercial business processing, that's it.
The worst thing is to use more standard numbers. For example, the national standard code system promoted by Skade and Hong Huangnan a few years ago has finally come into use.
As far as the current census needs are concerned, issues such as gender, place of origin, place of birth, time of birth, current residence, education level, family composition, etc. can actually be easily solved through coding. In the past, only 6 were used on the 18-digit ID card.
The bit represents the birthplace of everyone in the country. The reason is very simple. There are many people who hit each code, so it is appropriate to compile a coding table. People who have studied databases can easily find out by drawing an ER diagram that this should be done.
But there is only one field, that is, name, which can never get around the problem of Chinese encoding. The specific design work of each field of the census form can be left to the people of the Ministry of Civil Welfare, but the Chinese encoding must be solved now.
"Actually, the Chinese encoding problem is not difficult to solve. The problem is that it takes up too much space."
"The "Chinese Character Coded Character Set for Information Exchange" promulgated in 1980, commonly known as GB2312 encoding, not only stipulates the representation method of Chinese characters on computers, but also defines a set of methods for representing Chinese characters using 4 decimal digits, which is the location code
.The location code contains 3755 first-level Chinese characters, 3008 second-level Chinese characters, and 682 symbols, which basically meet the current needs. Therefore, the simplest Chinese encoding method is to encode one Chinese character every 4 columns. Everyone has painted themselves before in the college entrance examination.
The name was the location code used at that time."
"At present, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications has basically completed the installation of the telegraph system across the island, and several batches of telegraph operators have been trained. I wonder if it would be more convenient to directly use our standard Chinese telegraph code? It can also be used by everyone." He didn't say much at this time.
Shaozong spoke.
"The location codes are sorted according to the pinyin order within each level of Chinese characters, so it doesn't require much training. On the contrary, the standard telegraph codes are sorted by radicals, which is actually much more difficult to master than the location codes."
"The standard code has been in prototype since the end of the 19th century and was compiled directly from the Qing Dynasty. It is the natural choice for encoding Chinese characters at this stage."
"Is it easier to speak or write? The standard telegraph code starts with glyphs. That's because the people who started using telegraphs were the scholarly class. Our national popular education started with pinyin and has actually overturned the past system. Of course, it is more convenient for ordinary people to use location codes.
"
"The U.S. passport used standard code back then."
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Next update: Volume 7: Mainland - Guangdong and Guangxi Strategy Chapter 35
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