3 ms·

Perhaps 11 inches wide times 12 columns per inch?

• diggernet 9y ago
  Interesting thought. According to wiki, the printer used 10cpi though. Which suggests 132 columns plus margins on 14" paper. But that still doesn't answer why 132 and not 130 or 136 or whatever. Other variants of the printer had 100 columns (11" paper?) or 120 columns (what size paper?). Edit: Looking for more details on paper sizes for the 1403 printer, I find that the 132 column model was capable of simultaneously printing up to eight 1.5" adding machine tapes (13 chars per tape), or up to four 3.1" adding machine tapes (29 chars per tape), with a few columns lost due to margins and spacing between the tapes. Perhaps that was a factor in determining the 132 value?
  • gumby 9y ago
    > I find that the 132 column model was capable of simultaneously printing up to eight 1.5" adding machine tapes... WEIRD! What's the use case for printing large numbers of adding machine tapes in parallel? I don't believe there were electronic cash registers in that period so I can't imagine it would be for auditing receipt tapes (and anyway, would you use, you know, the computer for that?).
    • diggernet 9y ago
      Yeah, kind of puzzled about that myself. But see for yourself, on page 41: http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/1403/GA24-3073-8_1403_printer.pdf http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/1403/GA24-3073-8_...