>> It still somewhat blows my mind that you could do anything useful with 
>> so little memory. Presumably for processing large datasets, most of 
>> the data at any one time would be in secondary storage?
> 
> Large datasets then were also very tiny compared to large datasets of 
> today. :)

Sure. But 1MB is such a tiny amount of memory, it could only hold a few 
thousand records (depending on their size). It would almost be faster to 
process them by hand then go to all the trouble of punching cards and 
feeding them through a computer. So it must have been possible to 
process larger datasets than that somehow.

> see the revolution that were programs like ed (and its successor vi) in 
> bringing flexible terminal text editing rather than wasting tons of 
> paper... :)

...not to mention card...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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