From: Chuck Kuecker (ckuecker@ckent.org)
Date: Fri Jul 05 2002 - 06:47:29 MDT
At 12:48 PM 7/5/2002 +1000, you wrote:
>It's not an ancient joke, it's a famous sf short-short story by Fredric
>Brown (`Answer', 1954), so it might well have preceded routine use of
>Hollerith cards. The god computer is, in effect, a galactic Internet: all
>the machines in all the galaxies are linked superluminally. The story's in
>at least 17 anthologies, and here it is in full:
>
>http://www.alteich.com/oldsite/answer.htm
>
>Damien Broderick
Great Golden Age author - and Hollerith cards were first used by the 1890
US Census, http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/hollerith/
IBM had commercial card sorters pre World War Two - one use was by
Germany to keep track of concentration-camp victims. The case was later
dropped...
http://www.cmht.com/casewatch/civil/ibm.html
Chuck Kuecker
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