Tab-ulation

This item was spawned by thinking about Tabs, Tabulations and Tables. I’m really leading toward a specific point, but first need to spit out some Graphic Juice that I’ve been holding during this long unimaginative ADA work.

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For several months I’ve been making and testing courseware blind-style, using only the keyboard, not entirely foreign since I started programming in the DOS era and didn’t fully adopt the Mac/Windows all-mouse mode. I’ve always preferred the “Eastern Orthodox” keyboard-first style, and my early Windows courseware was emphatically keyboard-first. You didn’t need to touch the mouse. So this ADA work, though annoying, satisfies my urge to restore the primacy of the keyboard.

The Tab key, dominant in blind-style, has a long history. Ever since the first abacus made of pebbles in slots, business arithmetic has been based on tables.

The word comes from Latin tabula: “a board, plank; writing table; list, schedule; picture, painted panel, originally for inscriptions or games.” One definition includes ALL the old and new uses, from chessboards to ruled ledgers to punch cards to HTML layout.

Typewriters adopted a Tabulator key to quickly locate the columns of a pre-ruled ledger. The fancier ones had several Tab keys for columns of different widths:

Computing was tabulating from the exact start. Hollerith’s machine was designed to process census data, and his punch cards were laid out in columns for different categories.

Later punch cards, primarily used for programs instead of data, became more generic. You could always lay out your own data fields inside a card, and you could print those fields on the card for convenience.

McBee cards were the manual side of the punch era. Manual processing allowed cards to embed film images or sample envelopes. You could punch and sort gently around the edges, avoiding the area with film or samples.

A McBee layout closely resembled an offset printing layout, which often included photograph film, pieces of paper with Varityped text, and even physical objects. An offset markup, like a McBee card, was a table with several types of embeds.

Finally, the offset markup was the model for Hypertext MARKUP Language, one way of embedding a variety of (non-physical) things in the digital equivalent of a McBee card. HTML was not the only or first or best layout. It became the standard because Deepstate’s CERN invented it for Deepstate’s web.

The Tab key in a web browser is two-dimensional, taking the role of both tab and multiple linefeed, simulating the normal order of reading. It runs through the blocks on one horizontal layer, then jumps to the left end of the next line down. It can also be persuaded to follow other “natural” orders, which is the hard part of laying out and coding a blind-style web page!

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A map is another form of table, and a map is formed by surveying the land. A survey of population characteristics naturally demands a table. Survey data was Hollerith’s first assignment, and complex tabulation was synonymous with surveying for a while.

A new upload at American Radio Library demonstrates this semantic connection. It’s a survey of radio listeners conducted by Price Waterhouse in early 1933 at the lowest point of the Depression, just two months before FDR started solving problems.

Why not Gallup? Because Gallup also started his surveys a few months later. Before Gallup rebranded the task, tabulating population was a branch of accounting, done by people who understood journals and ledgers and punch cards. Price Waterhouse did the input side (surveys), the processing side (tabulating) and the output side (offset markup for attractive and clear presentation.) They emphasized metrology in the collection and showed art in the presentation.

Mysteriously they were able to do all of this without the assistance of the web or AI. They certainly used mechanical adding machines and likely used IBM sorters with some computing functions, common in the 30s.

The cover:

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We have prepared the following report presenting the results of the fourth consecutive circularization of radio listeners, which we have undertaken at your request. The procedure followed by us in mailing the cards and in tabulating the returns is outlined below. As in the three previous audits, a mailing company was selected by us to handle the addressing and mailing of questionnaires to the 80 cities of the United States on your network of radio stations. Telephone directories were obtained for these cities, and double Government postcards were addressed to a total of 212,500 names taken from these directories.

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= = = = = START CIPHER:

The cards were all keyed so as to identify the replies as genuine. They were mailed so that approximately one-sixth of the number to be sent to each city was mailed each day. We supervised the preparation of the cards, the addressing and the mailing.

In addition to the private key, known only to the mailing company and ourselves, by which all cards addressed to any city were coded for identification, a further secret key, known only to ourselves, was placed on all cards mailed.

= = = = = END CIPHER.

We think public and private encrypting keys are modern, invented by Satoshi for bitcoin.

The booklet includes a long and precise description of the tabulation and calibration. Here’s the main point:

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“What percentage of the total radio audience listens regularly to each network, in each city?”

“What network is listened to most, by most people?”

In 80 cities from coast to coast, this audit answers those two questions. It answers no others. It makes no sallies into other fields. The accumulative weight of all its data is focused on two basic measurements. For those two factors gauge the length and breadth of Columbia as a network — of radio as a medium. In slightly different terms, they are the fundamental measurements of any medium. “How many regular subscribers?” is the first measurement of any publication. “What magazine would you prefer if you could read only one?” is a familiar way of fixing reader preference.

= = = = = END METROLOGY.

Along with postcards, Price Waterhouse also called by phone and rang doorbells, still the three main forms of surveying for a census, a poll or an advertising campaign.

Among their conclusions is another surprisingly modern assessment of what makes people remember a product or candidate or station.

= = = = = START NEUROLOGY:

1) Visual memory, in the sense of calling to mind the number on the dial corresponding to the station;

(2) Auditory memory, in the sense of constantly hearing the call letters of the station;

(3) Kinesthetic or manual memory, in the sense of the daily repetition of the physical act of tuning in;

All firmly impress upon the mind the habit of identifying radio broadcasting with the station call letters.

= = = = = END NEUROLOGY.

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Modern pollsters have neglected these basics for so long that they no longer get meaningful results. They claim to be helpless in the face of a partial merging of phones and mail. Nonsense. Postcards still exist and still attract more FILTERED attention than the endlessly spammed email pile.

Now their feigned helplessness has taken a fatal step. Aaru no longer bothers to poll wetware.

Aaru simulates entire populations to predict the world’s events. Welcome to the new age of decision dominance.

Aaru simply polls Altman’s machine to get answers. It doesn’t bother to explain how Altman’s machine does its polling, but we know anyway. Altman steals everything from everywhere, and conducts millions of HONEYTRAP operations on vulnerable lonely people to SHAPE their responses toward Altman’s Share Value.

It’s an exact reversal of the principles and metrology established by Price Waterhouse and Gallup 90 years ago.