> P.S. I'm CCing my "youngest" - now in his 40s > who got into computing about age 16, after > punched paper tape was no longer used in computing.A bit younger, in fact. I wrote my first program in 6th grade. I suspect I was writing them with pencil and paper on green engineering graph paper under the sheets with a flash light the year before; but I didn't have a computer to run them on. (Dad and/or my brother Edward would take me to the Commodore Computer store in San Jose where I'd code them in the keyboard. Then my dad bought one.)
At any rate, a few years before I turned 10 my dad would bring me and my brothers in to Measurex where we played games on TTY terminals connected to main frames (Star Trek was a popular game we played). That terminal had paper tape. And I believe we had a paper tape version of the game. But, it was more for show than use, if I remember correctly. Which I often don't. :-)
Here's a screen shot of what would have been printed on paper then:
COMMAND> srscan
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 . . . . . . . . . . Stardate 3600.0
2 . . . . . * . . . Condition GREEN
3 . * . . . . * . . . Position 2 - 1, 8 - 3
4 . . . . . . . . . . Life Support ACTIVE
5 . . . . . . . . . . Warp Factor 5.0
6 . . . . . . . . * . Energy 5000.00
7 . . . . * . . * . . Torpedoes 10
8 . . E . . . . . . . Shields DOWN, 100% 2500.0 units
9 . . . . . . . . . Klingons Left 4
10 . . . * . . . . . . Time Left 7.00
Ah. Those were the days. Wait, these are the days!
-- Randy