And back in the 12'th century, when I was commanding a viking ship out to
plunder Russia, we had a navigation system which we had to program by
putting wood sticks in different holes on a map. They were connected by ten
meters of twisted guts tied to a rocking chair, which was the brain of the
system. It took 25 men two weeks to figure out the position of the ship,
based on the direction of the whirls in a cup of ale in the center of the
rocking chair's wheel.

THAT was the good old days!

I won!

Glenn Johansson
Sweden
(Seriously, many thanks to the author for the posting about why stop bits
are used - it was excellent! When I was in "computer fundamentals" training
to become support technician at Gateway 2000 Dublin, none of the teachers
knew why stop bits were used (they didn't know very much at all))