The basic operation of a card sorter is to take a punched card, examine a single column, and place the card into a selected pocket.
Columns 73-80 were ignored by the compilers and could be used for identification or a sequence number so that if the card deck was dropped it could be restored to its proper order using a card sorter.
I watched the card sorter go through several thousand cards and I was beginning to think I was a unique individual, resembling no one else sufficiently to permit me to be disguised successfully, when two cards popped out almost together.
They went down a long corridor past endless offices filled with clerks, desks, transtypers, filing machines, whirring card sorters.
The card sorter of the 4A/CTS (Number 4A Crossbar / Card Translator System) allowed six digit translation of the central office code number dialed by the customer.
My friend, a mathematician by training, loudly announced to the crowd: "This is not a computer, it is only a card sorter.
A set of cards could be rapidly sorted by drawing number or other punched data using a card sorter.
That's not entirely surprising given that its most direct ancestor was an extremely complicated electrical and mechanical card sorter, also made in Sweden and distributed by Jannersten Forlag, that relied on playing cards with tiny holes punched in them .
Nevertheless the 2560 combined the functions of a card reader, card punch, interpreter, and card sorter, allowing the Model 20 to replace several separate pieces of punched-card equipment.
