All This Is That: Remembering mainframe ASCII printouts (with images of Lincoln, Marilyn, Mickey Mouse, Mona Lisa, Jack B)

Thursday, September 05, 2013

Remembering mainframe ASCII printouts (with images of Lincoln, Marilyn, Mickey Mouse, Mona Lisa, Jack B)

By Jack Brummet, Technology Ed.

I took a tour of some large company with a main frame computer sometime in the mid- to late-60's. We saw the tapes and punchcards, cooling systems, reports, etc. What really stuck in my mind--and they knew this was a hit with visitors--were the ASCII images they generated programmatically and then printed out on their chain/line printers. I remember seeing a Marilyn and an Abe Lincoln, among other images.

You don't see these much anymore, now than we can print high definition images. But, like all good retro technologies, there are people out there keeping it alive. You can create your own ASCII images using one of several on line image generators. I created the one of myself on the Ascii art Generator website at http://asciiart.ca/.

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