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 It was out of date, but not wildly so at the time.
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.
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 It was out of date, but not wildly so at the time.