RE: Packet Loss

[Karyn Ulriksen <kulriksen () publichost com>]

Just a quick story involving punched tape distribution.  The meteorogist in
the story has since past away - but he would have appreciated it if these
packets *had* been lost:

Briefly:  Mom's best friend's husband was a meteorologist for the government
up on Donner Summit (the infamous one!).  He had this handy typewriter that
spat out punched tape.  You could pass the punch tape back through and it
would regenerate what ever you typed. Cool! There was a toggle on the gadget
that allowed you to regenerate on the local teletype or broadcast to ALL the
teletypes across the U.S. - generally used to distribute locally gather
weather statistics.

Well, my friends and I liked singing and I found the lyrics to "Bad, Bad
Leroy Brown" (showing my age here).  I probably don't have to go on here
with  what happened.  Just suffice it to say that the punched tapes worked
great and every meteorologist in the US had five copies of the lyrics.  I'm
sure that everyone was wondering what people were eating up on Donner Pass
this season!

K

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven M. Bellovin [mailto:smb () research att com]
> Sent: Friday, December 15, 2000 10:20 AM
> To: John R. Grant
> Cc: Roeland Meyer; Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu; 'Scott Bradner';
> nanog () merit edu
> Subject: Re: Packet Loss 
>
>
>
> In message 
> <Pine.LNX.4.30.0012150921140.15394-100000 () grant liveonthenet com>, "
> John R. Grant" writes:
> > Yesterday, Roeland Meyer wrote:
> > > I know for certain that it dates back to the pain-frame 
> daze and originally
> > > refered to 9600 baud open-reel tape <snip>
> >
> > <cringe>
> > that would be 9600 bit per inch GCR format 9-track tape, 
> don't you think?
> > </cringe>
>
> They didn't have nearly that density -- when I heard the 
> phrase, it was 
> 800 or 1600 bits per linear inch (1600' reels), with 8 bits (plus 
> parity) across.  And 200 bpi 6-track tapes were still in use, 
> though being 
> phased out.
>
>
>               --Steve Bellovin