Jay Leafey wrote:
I remember numbering on the back of cards with a pencil as a backup when you dropped the deck. And of course you numbered by tens just in case you had to insert something.
I always took a magic-marker and made a diagonal line across the top of the deck. Made the initial rough sort after a "deck reorg" (somebody dropped the deck) easier. (NCR Century 100, circa. 1968)
I recall finishing up a service call one evening and overhearing one end of a phone conversation. (This was in '64 or '65). The guy was about to make his evening transmission of the day's activity to the home office. The conversation went something like this: "Yeah, I'm pretty busy tonight. I'm gonna send 'em all together." <pause> "Oh! No problem. The AR's have an upper left corner cut; payroll has a pink stripe" <pause> O.K., here we go.... (And pulls the "data" switch on the phone, followed immediately by insane laughter, confident that the guy on the other end had not a clue about how to break his freshly punched deck apart with a sorter or collator.)