so eric...please do reread the full post, particularly the parts about frozen print media, the internet being an ever expanding knowledge base and of course accessing the server brains of other parker enthusiast...kinda catchy phraseology dont you think?

and can someone else please deal with this chronic malcontent?...i do not have the patience. plus, i gotta go...take care of business that is...

mike, are you watchin?...maybe you an eric can have a go while i am busy selling.

catch up with you later...

bill: i think i understand what you are talking about. but, i do not have the time right now to spend on it. hopefully, the factory letter will tell all. meantime, thanks for your input.

bill: just got back from picking up a small collection of hunting grade double guns to sell. no parkers, but some interesting guns, none the less... anyway, i will be taking pictures soon and i will take a picture of the forend hook on the 26" vhe barrels and post it here. thanks again. ed

Don't expect too much from a 240,000 range factory letter. The IBM card is the only research vehicle and they don't usually include much information. There are exceptions, however. We'll be looking for those pictures.

punch cards in 1938? how cool was that?

the 1880 census took seven years to compile, there was a good chance the 1890 would not be done before the 1900 started, to speed it up, the punch card concept (originally for programming looms) was proposed by Hermann Hollerith, this kicked off the Tabulating Machine Company which became IBM about 20 years later.

odd fact -- the size of the card had to be comfortable to handle - so it was matched to the old greenback paper money

oh: interesting history.

do you recall if the coding system used for these early cards was based on an 8 bit word or something else?

The late Remington Parker cards were not punched with data on the gun in question. All data was hand written. They were used because they were there. We found them in shoe boxes where they probably still reside.

it was called (wonder how they came up with this) the Hollerith code :rotf:

a series of zone and digits - the top three rows of the card were the zones,

the next nine where the digits - so - first zone & first digit was the letter A , zone 1 digit 2 a B and so on.

there were 80 columns in a card

digits only were numbers - odd combinations where special charaters, this code was later able to be translated simply into hexidecimal for the 16 base code in electronic computers.

any more detail that that and most folks will glaze over just before their foreheads hit the key board :rotf:

Hollerith was the guy that came up with the idea

yes he was - did you see post #35? :whistle: