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Nowadays, in corporate offices where there are typically several office printers per floor, sending a file to a printer does not result in any additional pages identifying the print job, at least by default; it is expected that people would walk to the printer immediately and will be able to find their printouts and to leave other people's jobs alone, without wasting paper for cover pages.

I vaguely remember the time in the late 80s or early 90s when SunOS or an early version of Solaris would, by default, print a cover, or "header", page with the user name, the date and time when the job was submitted, the file name or (stdin), etc. Except the user name, most of that information was pretty much useless. A remnant of the past, perhaps, when it was useful?

Earlier still, when mainframe operators had to correlate line printer output to batch jobs, how did the printout covers/trailers look like? What kind of information for the operator and the user was included there?

Leo B.
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    From (vague) memory, when printing to a line printer VMS printed a cover sheet with the job name in large (~10 line) characters along with the username and timestamp (on a single line). – Alex Hajnal Feb 04 '21 at 06:58
  • @AlexHajnal That's it, no statistical information? – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 07:43
  • IIRC, "statistical" (or accounting) information would come at the end of the job, not on the cover page, as part of the job execution flow. – dirkt Feb 04 '21 at 08:01
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    Most printers and printer drivers for shared printers can still print a header page - It's just not done anymore to protect the environment. – tofro Feb 04 '21 at 08:34
  • Sun machines were not mainframes, but large Unix boxes. If I recall correctly the header page was generated by the lpr command as part of preparing the printjob. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Feb 04 '21 at 08:42
  • @dirkt Sure, that's why the question mentions footers as well. – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 09:01
  • @tofro I know. What's your point? – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 09:03
  • @ThorbjørnRavnAndersen I know, and the ones I've used were not that large. IIRC that the header page was generated by the spooler by default, unless the user invoked lpr with a flag to suppress it. My point is that there was a time when header pages were still generated by default even though their utility was marginal. – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 09:07
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    @LeoB. "footer" usually means "a line at the bottom of each page", that's different from "at the end". Just as "header" means "a line a to the top of each page", which is different from the cover page. – dirkt Feb 04 '21 at 09:33
  • @LeoB. It might e helpful if you add why you want to have this information or for what you want to use it - otherwise this is a way too broad request, as each and every spool did handle this different. – Raffzahn Feb 04 '21 at 09:49
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    Dates and times were not useless - when you've got a stack of printouts of the same file, it's useful to be able to tell which version you're looking at. – dave Feb 04 '21 at 13:15
  • Don't forget, when these conventions originated, users could not 'walk to the printer' (it was probably behind the glass wall) nor would they be there at the right time (because batch operation). – dave Feb 04 '21 at 13:16
  • @dirkt My thought was that user-printed data is the payload; then the cover page is its header. What would be a better term for the information printed at the end? – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 16:59
  • @another-dave And that's exactly the impetus of my question. – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 17:00
  • @Raffzahn I want to compare the Western and the Soviet approach. Here is an example of a printout. There was no cover page or header lines at all. Everything but the last 15 lines is printed by a user process (the programming system environment). The trailer packs a lot of information, with very detailed accounting. – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 17:25
  • That sort of stuff would typically be part of a log file, not part of the material added by the print system. – dave Feb 04 '21 at 18:15
  • @another-dave It was written to the log file as well, but making that information readily available was quite useful for a typical user interacting with the system only via punched cards. It is interesting that the CPU time and the line printer paper were budgeted (the high quality fanfold paper was imported from Finland), but not the locally-produced punched cards or punched tape. – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 18:30

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That question is rather wide, as there wasn't a mainframe OS but many. Equally important, headers were not made by the OS, but whatever SPOOL system was used. And there were many.

Here a typical MVS(ish) cover page:

enter image description here

Depending on organisational structure of OS and SPOOL-system a cover (or SPOOL) page may include:

  • Job Name
  • User Name
  • Account Number

These three were quite often 'enlarged' for easy selection

  • Process ( Task) ID
  • Computer Name
  • OS name
  • Job Date/Time
  • Job Number
  • Printout Date/Time
  • SPOOL File Name and Type
  • Spool-ID
  • Spool-In and Spool-Out Times

Some customer specific data may include items for delivery like

  • Recipients Name
  • Department Name
  • Room Number
  • Phone Number

Keep in mind, companies/institutions that had mainframes were usually not self employed in a basement, but rather large with many in house users. In early times IT departments did patch the spool system used in wired ways to modify header pages to fit their needs. In later years spool systems offered exit functions to enhance these pages in standardized ways.

It's important to keep in mind that all these are meta data not data produced in the run itself. Such will always be part of the printed data, not any cover page - although, depending on OS, they can be put on separate pages as well (as part of the content printed).

The distribution of data between a first and last page again depends on the OS, but as well on data type. Everything known ahead of printing is usually printed on the first page - which is in case of spooling is most information. The last page usually only repeats information.

To support distribution/filing most spoolers usually did put all information on the upper half of the first page (see picture), leaving the lower half for enlarged text or alike. To understand this, it's necessary to imagine how folded paper works:

  • Every other page comes out face down.

On which page a printout starts is random, so 50% end up with their first page on a page-down page (*1). For distribution (*2) and filing this is not really satisfying. With all information in the upper half, printouts that started on face-down page, could have their top page folded, so all data is again visible right away.

Another way to handle this (as Another-Dave mentions) was to simply print the (first) cover page twice. Now, independent of the way the paper came out, there was always at least one cover page printed on an 'even' page.

Another detail about cover pages was that they usually started and ended with multiple lines (usually 3) of X. This proved helpful when a printed stack was to be separated into single jobs to be delivered to its owner. It made finding cover pages easy when flipping (scanning) thru the stack. More so, with less than perfect adjusted pages these X-ed lines covered the perforation, making it visible even without flipping thru.

When high speed lasers came into use (late 70s/early 80s) this was turned into a black rectangle crossing from the cover page over to the next page, making it a definite feature to be seen right away.

So yeah, there are less obvious details of hidden in plain sight :))

*1 - Couldn't fit more page on the line :)

*2 - Usually by young ladies (or, more often grumpy old man) pushing a cart with printouts, card stacks and tapes around the building.

Raffzahn
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  • Unless I'm imagining it, I think our MVS spooling system always started jobs on a "face up" page. I've no idea if that was a local mod or not. People rarely used a mainframe printer to make a 2 or 3 page document, so the amount of paper wasted on occasional blank pages was negligible. The key information on the splitter sheet was the batch job ID (user name, account number, etc) and the date and time, printed huge lettering as in the image. – alephzero Feb 04 '21 at 12:43
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    @alephzero I would be realy interested in how a line printer could detect whats a 'face up' page is mounted/how to advance until one is reached. Serious. – Raffzahn Feb 04 '21 at 12:52
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    Systems I've used coped with the face up/down issue by printing two copies of the job burst page. Also, printing "over the perforations" produced a mark that could be seen viewing the pile of paper edge-on, thus helping operators to split it up. – dave Feb 04 '21 at 13:21
  • That printout is very cool! Was there any accounting information printed at the end? – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 16:49
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    I remember that, at university, when the printer hammered out those series of lines full of asterisks, it would make a characteristic sound that told you that a header page was coming out. At one company I worked for, you had to walk up to a counter where somebody would hand you the printouts you had ordered. They were individually wrapped in plastic. – Nimloth Feb 04 '21 at 17:09
  • @Nimloth Were they wrapped for data security purposes? Was that at one of the TLA "companies"? – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 18:32
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    I was doing an internship at a telephone company (in Canada). The plastic bag was transparent, but of course you couldn't see much beyond the first page without opening the bag. This was not described to me as a data security measure, I've always thought it was just someone's idea of convenience, late-1980s style. – Nimloth Feb 04 '21 at 19:24
  • @another-dave Oh, true, that's another way to handle the issue. I would like to add it as well. Printing over the 'edge' depends of course on printer/adjustment, as it's impossible to print there with perfect aligned paper. But what I remember o printing a bunch of X-ed lines (like seen above) at the end, so cover pages can be scanned more easy when flipping thru. – Raffzahn Feb 04 '21 at 20:16
  • @LeoB. Not sure what you refer to. The page above is a rather new example. Account information is quite user dependent. Spool/OS just provided fields to be filled. Some companies had quite elaborate schemes. For example, a company I knew used a scheme of account names (user names) and account numbers (accounting) like this: For project 110 there was a combination of AW110/AW110 for development. Related accounts for special uses - like AW110RAF/ AW110 as a dedicated user for a developer (RAFfzahn) - use the same account number so CPU usage gets summed up across all related accounts. – Raffzahn Feb 04 '21 at 20:27
  • @LeoB. In contrast productive runs would be done under SW110/ SW110 - except the account number could be differ depending on the purpose / owner of the job. Like all jobs of an application would always run under the same user, but account numbers would vary according to department or subsidiary - like SW110/ SW110GB for a job run for a subsidiary in England, or SW110/ SW110VER when run for marketing. Other companies used whatever account numbers their internal settlement system used. Long story short: these values are arbitrary and extreme user dependant – Raffzahn Feb 04 '21 at 20:33
  • @Raffzahn I mean data like the amount of elapsed user/system CPU time, other used resources, remaining weekly/monthly budgets, etc. For example, in the linked printout there are counts of block reads/writes issued by the job, split by magnetic drums, disks and tapes, as well as the total count of tape block skips, allowing to estimate the efficiency of using the magnetic media in general and tapes in particular. – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 21:14
  • @LeoB. These are not data for cover pages, but part of the job run. If at all, they are displayed at the end, as part of the output, not as cover pages. But more often they are not printed ar all, as these are accounting data, not useful for any regular user - and developers used different tools providing way better data. Or they queried the accounting system holding that data - after all, all job criteria used for accounting are put into a database used to distribute cost. – Raffzahn Feb 04 '21 at 22:45
  • Then, sparing the users from having to submit a separate job to query the accounting system by cramming as much information as possible into every printout was a Soviet thing. – Leo B. Feb 04 '21 at 22:52
  • @Raffzahn high speed line printers had mechanical stacking devices rather than just relying on the creases in the fanfold paper to fold up consistently. Skip tapes could be long enough for two pages not one with a separate channel for "skip to double-page boundary". Or the spooling software could count the pages and eject a blank page as required. So there are several options available. Of course it would rely on the operators loading the paper consistently. I might be imagining this ,but I don't remember seeing the top sheet folded double to reveal the cover sheet ID on half the prints. – alephzero Feb 04 '21 at 22:55
  • @alephzero Stackers had no idea about page orientation, they simply stacked. The double page counting should work if the printer supports a tape long enough for two pages (not many did). Tapes had enough channels available that could be used, so yes, a possibility to get that done. I have to admit I never seen this. Not while operating our own computing room (two CDC style chain printer and an older drum one) nor in any other computing center of the 70s/80s. Still paper would need to be inserted careful to synchronise with such a double tape - hard without a double page button :) – Raffzahn Feb 04 '21 at 23:11
  • @alephzero Counting only works if the software has a way to synchronize with the printer operation - every manual page transport would have to be entered into the software and so on - I doubt that this is a practical solution. – Raffzahn Feb 04 '21 at 23:12