Comment by mrtksn
5 years ago
The first Turkish software export was measured in Meters :)
The story goes, a Turkish company sells a software to a British client for a few hundreds thousands GBP and has to go though the bureaucracy for the accounting purposes.
Turns out, the clerk in the customs doesn't understand how software works and says he cannot certify the export of a few hundred grands worth of goods delivered by press of a button(the delivery was done through 28kbps modem connection). They bring him a disk but this is not good enough, there is no way this piece is worth that much he says and rejects the application.
They end up putting the software on a tape and declare that they've sold 2000 meters of fine Turkish software to the Brits. The clerk likes that, so the first software export from Turkey ends up being measured in Meters!
[0] The sources are in Turkish but the guy who was involved in this is Ali Akurgal.
I can't find a reference now, but there's an old story about an early import of some software from the UK into Ireland (in the 50s or so). The software came on punched cards, and when it arrived turned out not to load. After much investigation it turned out that some cards were missing, so the vendor sent it again. This time different cards were missing. Eventually the problem was tracked down; at the time, it was normal for customs officials to retain a small sample of any bulk material imported for post-hoc inspection. The punched cards were viewed as a bulk material...
As a Turkish, I can confirm the story.
Also the same story highlights the roots of the term "Tape Out".
Since the designs of ICs were stored in the tapes at the time, you write the final design to a tape and send it out to fab, hence you Tape out the design.
I recall from some HN story that "tape out" is an even older term, referring to the practice of putting black line tape on the (much magnified) artwork for the photomask. Wikipedia seems to confirm this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape-out#History.
Thanks for the info, TIL something new.
Cheers!
That's a great story. If I did that for my projects I'm sure I'd come off feeling as if I've built a lot more than I currently do.