this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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The IBM 503, the last valve computer, that Cobol and Fortran, the first languages were developed on, had 20 bit words.
So an 80 column card could fit 4 words across. Thats why teletypes and terminals had 80 coulmns of text - so they were the same size as punch cards.
Fortran only used 72 columns, so the last 8 were unused.
It seems weird, but on early computers bytes were not based on multiples of 8 or 4 (like 8 but, 16 bit, 32 bit etc). Some computers had 15, 10, 7, 25, even 50 bit words.
I remember our first personal computer had 40 columns on the screen, but we ended up getting an 80 column graphics card for it.
I taught myself basic, but the first language I took in college was fortran, and it was on cards. A bit of an aberration: they had moved on to somewhat more modern equipment, but the lab was being upgraded, so they reverted you the card system for a semester temporarily. It was out of date, but not wildly so at the time.