Colgate Jubilee
Gord and Marg Ledingham 25th Anniversary
Stuart and Margie 25th Anniversary
at Larry and Elizabeth Kitson’s in Regina
Chris on the job
Visible in my shirt pocket is a blank 80-column computer punch card. I was probably using this one as a notepad. However, punch cards were a fundamental media for computers of the day. Just outside the photo, to my left, Is a large card reader/punch unit. The card reader had an input capacity of 3000 cards — which we computer operators would lift freehand from trays and drop into the hopper. One source of cards — with data punched in — was the long distance (LD) toll operators who would mark the start and end time of each call onto the card. The card was then sent through an optical mark reader (OMR) which would then punch the call info onto the card. Another source of the cards was the computer programmers who would write “lines of code” onto coding sheets and submit them to the keypunch department. In SaskTel the keypunch department was located in a room adjacent to the computer room on the other side of full glass partitions. This room was also to my left on the other side of the card reader/punch. I clearly remember the supervisor of the keypunch pool and her favourite saying: “In a pidgeon’s crotch!”
Straight ahead from where I am sitting was the 1403 High Speed Fanfold printer. It was an impact printer that featured a continuosly flying print chain. Among many items this printer would print the customer phone bills detailing the destination and time of every toll call.
The above was posted on the Historic Saskatchewan facebook page in October 2025. Here is some of the reaction:
