Re: fortran character set

Terence wrote:
I'm English, live in Australia and worked for foreign companies in
South America and Europe most of my life (and one time in New York); ...

....

But Americans seem to have needed to talk about Pounds in the 40's and
'50s, (since 1 Pound used to equal five US dollars) and latched onto
this strange "number" sign that looked a bit like the Pound smbol that
they couldn't find on their keyboards (well, input devices known as
teletype machines).
....

I don't agree w/ that hypothesis at all -- not that it's at all important, but I am old enough to know that most "Amurricuns" knew of the British pound and the "bar-L" symbol and that the "#" was utilized for many things in the US long before the advent of electronic data processing, two of the most prevalent being "number" and "pound-weight".

As I noted earlier, I have handwritten grain receipts of grandfather's from the 1910's and 1920's with test weights for wheat written w/ the "#" symbol (60 lb is the official weight for a bushel of wheat -- price is set by the bushel, but measured by weight for delivery, not volume, hence the need for establishing test weights on a load by load basis when delivered to grain elevator in town).

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Relevant Pages

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