Can you identify the object in the photograph above? The object is made of plastic, 2 15/16" long, 1 5/16" wide at its base. The black-and-white is meant to suggest “the past.” But not the distant past. (Yes, that depends upon how one defines distant.)
Reader, I invite you to play twenty questions or shout out the answer in the comments. I have no idea how recognizable this object is, and I’m curious to see what happens.
7:34 a.m.: The mystery is no more. Emerick Rogul identified the mystery object as a floppy-disk notcher, used to turn single-sided 5 1/4" floppy disks into double-sided disks by punching a notch into the side of the disk’s plastic housing. Congratulations, Emerick!
A Google Books search for suncom notcher turns up the following item:
And suddenly I’m back typing on my Apple //c.[InfoWorld, January 20, 1986.]
comments: 6
A stapler or a hole punch possibly. Whatever it is, it's quite cute really.
The punch is on the right track, but it’s not a hole punch of the traditional sort. It doesn’t punch circles.
A floppy disk notcher. Makes a single-sided floppy disk double-sided.
That’s it!
I would have never guessed. Despite dipping my toes in the word processing water during a failed attempt to use Volkswriter, I cut my teeth on the first Mac, the one shaped like a toaster, which used 3.5 inch floppies encased in plastic. I never used a floppy-floppy. When I started my first teaching job away from Urbana in 1988, it was nearly impossible to find the 3.5 inch kind, because "nobody had a Mac" in that town.
“Volkswriter”: there’s a madeleine.
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