Years ago (early 80's) I was working on a microprogrammed bit slice 32 bit cpu and we joking about implementing some of those instructions.

The old 'branch and catch fire' was implemented on a 6800 if my memory serves me right. A particular illegal instruction would cause the cpu to halt and get hot.

The old question of how to add records to a tape - backspace and stretch tape! was the answer.

The references to 'operators' ,punch cards, punch tape and mag tape show the age of this.

The Knuth series on algorithms also refers to sorting on tape etc - not too much of an issue these days!!!!