In a massive 8 hour effort Bill Worthington helped to read an additional 79 card decks for inclusion on the CD. Only one box, with about 24 card decks in it, remains of the original 18 boxes that came with the IBM 1401. It looks like the last box contains duplicate copies of programs we have already read. Card decks in the other boxes that came with the 1401 and Ron Mak's additional decks from Wednesday's session have now been read. Bill W and I plan to reconvene next Thursday morning to complete this last original box and a few decks recently submitted by Mike Albaugh.

It should be pointed out that quite a few shorter utility programs occur multiple times (maybe up to 5 times) in the 18 boxs of cards coming with the IBM 1401. The card count can differ between the instances because we included what looks to be either the test data or control data with each program instance and those vary.

We have attempted to collect all the meta data, like handwriting on the cards, to pass along on the CD. Bill W. brought in his German dictionary and, where we could, we named the file in the English equivalent of the German title handwritten on the deck and then recorded the German in the meta data. It was interesting that for the same utility program the handwritten instructions on the cards are more and less complete about the use of sense switches, for example, between the instances. The handwritten information was difficult to capture since it was often written with a "magic marker" in German and abbreviated.

By far the most challenging decks to read were the two copies of Sort 7 object decks. The 1187 card, Sort 7 Pass 2, was attempted probably 8-9 times before being successfully captured on the first encounter and 4 times at the second occurance. Bill noticed that in the first occurance the card stock was warped and flimsy as if the box had been left in sunlight for a long time deteriorating the fiber structure. For the only time (so far) the card reader actually damaged cards in the reading process. A few were successfully duplicated on the IBM 026 in the Restoration room, but for three cards the 026 refused to even register the card and we needed to use the IBM 010 in the back area. (Nothing was taken out of the back area to do this.) We are confident no errors were created in this process and of course all decks were read and verified.

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