The punch card (or "Hollerith" card) is a recording medium for holding information for use by automated data processing machines. Made of stiff cardboard, the punch card represents information by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions on the card. In the first generation of computing, from the 1920s into the 1950s, punch cards were the primary medium for data storage and processing. They were an important medium, particularly for data input, well into the 1970s, but are now long obsolete outside of a few legacy systems and specialized applications. A recording medium is a physical material that holds information expressed in any of the existing recording formats. ... Data processing is any process that converts data into information. ... Originally, the word computing was synonymous with counting and calculating, and a computer was a person who computes. ... Sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or primarily in North America as the Roaring Twenties. // Events and trends Technology John T. Thompson invents Thompson submachine gun, also known as Tommy gun John Logie Baird invents the first working television system (1925) Charles Lindbergh becomes the first person to fly... Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the... This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1970s. ... A legacy system is an antiquated computer system or application program which continues to be used because the user (typically an organization) does not want to replace or redesign it. ...

A card used to enter programs and data into IBM mainframe computers in the 1970s

Subject: Old computer punch card Caption: This is a punch card such as was used to enter programs into the mainframe system at the University of Missouri - Rolla in the late 1970s. ... Subject: Old computer punch card Caption: This is a punch card such as was used to enter programs into the mainframe system at the University of Missouri - Rolla in the late 1970s. ...

Origins

Punch card system of a music machine. Also referred to as Book music, a one stop European media for organs

The punched card predates computers considerably. As early as 1725 Basile Bouchon used perforated paper loop in a loom to establish the pattern to be reproduced on cloth, and in 1726 his co-worker Jean-Baptiste Falcon improved on his design by using perforated paper cards attached to one another, which made it easier to quickly change the program. The Bouchon-Falcon loom was semi-automatic and required manual feed of the program. Joseph Jacquard used punched cards in 1801 as a control device for the more automatic Jacquard looms, which met with great success. Download high resolution version (750x1000, 137 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (750x1000, 137 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Book Music is the European version of making mechanical music medium for organs in Europe and it is actually similar to piano rolls, but book music is produced by thick cardboard, with perforated holes, and it is presented and played in a folded zig-zag style. ... The tower of a personal computer (specifically a Power Mac G5). ... Events February 8 - Catherine I became empress of Russia February 20 - The first reported case of white men scalping Native Americans takes place in New Hampshire colony. ... Basile Bouchon was a textile worker in Lyon who invented a way to control a loom with a perforated paper tape in 1725. ... Events George Friderich Handel becomes a British subject. ... Joseph Marie Jacquard. ... 1801 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Jacquard loom on display at Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England The Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801, which used the holes punched in pasteboard punch cards to control the weaving of patterns in fabric. ...

Such cards were also used as an input method for the primitive calculating machines of the late 19th century. The version by Herman Hollerith, patented on June 8, 1887 and used with mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 U.S. Census, was a piece of cardboard about 90 mm by 215 mm, with round holes. This was the same size as the dollar bill of the time, so that storage cabinets designed for money could be used for his cards. The early applications of punched cards all used specifically-designed card layouts. It wasn't until around 1928 that punched cards and machines were made "general purpose". In that year, punched cards were made a standard size, exactly 7-3/8 inch by 3-1/4 inch (187.325 by 82.55 mm), reportedly corresponding to the US currency of the day, though some sources characterise this assertion as urban legend. Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Herman Hollerith Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was an American businessman and the promulgator of the punch card. ... June 8 is the 159th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (160th in leap years), with 206 days remaining. ... 1887 is a common year starting on Saturday (click on link for calendar). ... 1890 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... The United States Census Bureau (officially Bureau of the Census) is a part of the United States Department of Commerce. ... (Redirected from 1 E 2 m) To help compare different orders of magnitude this page lists lengths between 100 m and 1 km. ... A millimetre (American spelling: millimeter, symbol mm) is an SI unit of length that is equal to one thousandth of a metre. ... A dollar bill can be of various kinds of currency: Federal Reserve dollar bill (modern U.S. currency) United States note (historic U.S. currency) Silver certificate (historic U.S. currency) Gold certificate (historic U.S. currency) Canada dollar (Canadian currency) Australian dollar (Australian currency) New Zealand dollar (New Zealand... Mid-19th century tool for converting between different standards of the inch An inch is an Imperial unit of length. ... A millimetre (American spelling: millimeter, symbol mm) is an SI unit of length that is equal to one thousandth of a metre. ... A large-sized note is a bill of any denomination of U.S. currency printed between 1863 and 1929. ... Urban legends are a kind of folklore consisting of stories often thought to be factual by those circulating them. ...

To compensate for the cyclical nature of the Census Bureau's demand for his machines, Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company (1896) which was bought by Thomas J. Watson Sr., founder of IBM in 1914. IBM manufactured and marketed a wide variety of business machines and added the Hollerith card equipment to its line. 1896 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Thomas J. Watson, Sr. ... International Business Machines Corporation (IBM, or colloquially, Big Blue) (NYSE: IBM) (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since 1888) is headquartered in Armonk, New York, USA. The company manufactures and sells computer hardware, software, and services. ... 1914 is a common year starting on Thursday. ...

The IBM 80-column punching format, with rectangular holes, eventually won out over the UNIVAC 90-character format, which used 45 columns (2 characters in each) of 12 round holes. IBM (Hollerith) punched cards are made of smooth stock, .007 of an inch thick. There are about 143 cards to the inch thickness; a group of such cards is called a deck. Punch cards were widely known as just IBM cards. This article needs to be wikified. ...

Functional details

A reproducing punch, like this one from IBM, could make exact copies of a deck of cards.

The method is quite simple: On a piece of light-weight cardboard, successive positions either have a hole punched through them or are left intact. The rectangular bits of paper punched out are called chads. Thus, each punch location on the card represents a single binary digit (or "bit"). Each column on the card contained several punch positions (multiple bits). Download high resolution version (2272x1704, 1150 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (2272x1704, 1150 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The binary or base-two numeral system is a system for representing numbers in which a radix of two is used; that is, each digit in a binary numeral may have either of two different values. ... A bit (abbreviated b) is the most basic information unit used in computing and information theory. ...

The IBM card format, which became standard, held 80 columns of 12 punch locations each, representing 80 characters. Originally only numeric information was coded with 1 punch per column (digit[0-9]). Later, codes were introduced for upper-case letters and special characters. A column with 2 punches (zone[12,11,0] + digit[1-9]) was a letter; 3 punches (zone[12,11,0] + digit[1-7] + 8) was a special character. The introduction of EBCDIC in 1964 allowed columns with as many as 6 punches (zones[12,11,0,8,9] + digit[1-7]). The punch cards were 7 and 3/8 inches long by 3 and 1/4 inches high and were 0.007 inch thick with the upper right corner cut at an angle (Condensed Computer Encyclopedia, 1969, pages 401-403). EBCDIC (Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code) is an 8-bit character encoding (codepage) used on IBM mainframe operating systems, like z/OS, s/390, AS/400 and i5/OS. It is also employed on various non-IBM platforms such as Fujitsu-Siemens BS2000/OSD and HP MPE/iX. It... 1964 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

A keypunch for manual entry of data

Data was entered on a machine called a keypunch, which was like a large, very noisy typewriter. Often the text was also printed at the top of the card, allowing humans to read the text as well. This was done using a machine called an interpreter. Later model keypunches could do this as well. Multi-character data, such as words or large numbers, was stored in adjacent card columns known as fields. For applications in which accuracy was critical, the practice was to have two different operators key the same data, with the second using a card-verifier instead of a card-punch. Verified cards would be marked with a rounded notch on the right end. Failed cards would be replaced by a key punch operator. There was a great demand for key-punch operators, usually women, who worked full-time on key punch and verifier machines. Image File history File links Aus de: Lochkartenauswertegerät von IBM, eigenes Bild GFDL File links The following pages link to this file: Punch card ... Image File history File links Aus de: Lochkartenauswertegerät von IBM, eigenes Bild GFDL File links The following pages link to this file: Punch card ... Manual card punches (not keypunches) A key punch is a machine for manually entering data onto punch cards. ...

Electromechanical equipment (called unit record equipment) for punching, sorting, tabulating and printing the cards was manufactured. These machines allowed sophisticated data processing tasks to be accomplished long before computers were invented. The card readers used an electrical (metal brush) or, later, optical sensor to detect which positions on the card contained a hole. They had high-speed mechanical feeders to process around one hundred cards per minute. All processing was done with electromechanical counters and relays. The machines were programmed using wire patch panels. Before the advent of electronic computers, data processing was performed using electromechanical devices called unit record equipment, electric accounting machines (EAM) or A data processing shop would have at least one of most of the machine types. ...

Other formats

A System 3 punch card.

Other coding schemes, sizes of card, and hole shapes were tried at various times. Mark sense cards had printed ovals that humans would fill in with a pencil. Specialized card punches could detect these marks and punch the corresponding information into the card. There were also needle cards with all the punch positions perforated so data could be punched out manually, one hole at a time, with a device like a blunt pin with its wire bent into a finger-ring on the other end. In the early 1970s, IBM introduced a new, smaller, round-hole, 96-column card format along with the IBM System 3 computer. Download high resolution version (863x718, 40 KB)System 3 punch card This is a digital photograph I took on August 11, 2004 of an IBM System 3 punch card. ... Download high resolution version (863x718, 40 KB)System 3 punch card This is a digital photograph I took on August 11, 2004 of an IBM System 3 punch card. ... CODE is a visual programming language and system for parallel programming, letting users compose sequential programs into parallel ones. ... This article provides extensive lists of events and significant personalities of the 1970s. ... A System 3 punch card. ...

Aperture cards are a specialized use of punch cards for storing "blueprints". A drawing is photographed onto 35 mm film and the image is mounted in a window on the right half of the punch card. Information about the drawing, e.g. the drawing number, is punched in the left half. Modern blueprint of the French galleon La Belle. ... Simulated 35 mm film with soundtracks - The outermost strips (on either side) contain the SDDS soundtrack as an image of a digital signal. ...

IBM punch cards could be used with early computers in a binary mode where every column was treated as a simple bitfield, and every combination of holes was permitted . In this binary mode, cards could be made in which every possible punch position had a hole: these were called "lace cards." For example, the IBM 700/7000 series scientific computers treated every row as two 36-bit words, in columns 1-72, ignoring the last 8 columns. Other computers, like the IBM 1130, used every possible hole. A lace card from the early 1970s. ... The IBM 700/7000 series was a series of incompatible large scale (mainframe) computer systems made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. ... The IBM 1130 Computing System was introduced in 1965. ...

Advantages

In its earliest uses, the punch card was not just a data recording medium, but a controlling element of the data processing operation. Electrical pulses produced when the read brushes passed through holes punched in the cards directly triggered electro-mechanical counters, relays, and solenoids. Cards were inexpensive and provided a permanent record of each transaction. Large organizations had warehouses filled with punch card records. Automotive style miniature relay A relay is an electrical switch that opens and closes automatically under control of another electrical circuit. ... 1). ...

One reason punch cards persisted into the early computer age was that an expensive computer was not required to encode information onto the cards. When the time came to transfer punch card information into the computer, the process could occur at very high speed, either by the computer itself or by a separate, smaller computer (e.g. an IBM 1401) that read the cards and wrote the data onto magnetic tapes or, later, on removable hard disks, that could then be mounted on the larger computer, thus making best use of expensive mainframe computer time. The IBM 1401 was a variable wordlength decimal computer that was announced by IBM on October 5, 1959 and marketed as an inexpensive Business Computer. It was withdrawn on February 8, 1971. ... Mainframes (often colloquially referred to as big iron) are large and expensive computers used mainly by government institutions and large companies for legacy applications, typically bulk data processing (such as censuses, industry/consumer statistics, ERP, and bank transaction processing). ...

Obsolescence

Punched-card systems fell out of favor in the mid to late 1970s, as disk storage became cost effective, and affordable interactive terminals meant that users could edit their work with the computer directly rather than requiring the intermediate step of the punched cards. Disk Drive is the afternoon show on CBC Radio Two. ... A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device. ...

However, their influence lives on through many standard conventions and file formats. The terminals that replaced the punched cards displayed 80 columns of text, for compatibility with existing software. Many programs still operate on the convention of 80 text columns, although strict adherence to that is fading as newer systems employ graphical user interfaces with variable-width type fonts. An example of graphical user interface in Microsoft Windows XP An example of graphical user interface in Apples Mac OS X A graphical user interface (or GUI, pronounced gooey) is a method of interacting with a computer through a metaphor of direct manipulation of graphical images and widgets in...

Dimpled and hanging chads

The term for the punched card area which is removed during a punch is chad. One notorious problem with a punched card system of tabulation is the incomplete punch; this can lead to a smaller hole than expected, or to a mere slit on the card, or to a mere dimple on the card. Thus a chad which is still attached to the card is a hanging chad. This technical problem was claimed by the Democratic Party to have influenced the 2000 U.S. presidential election in the state of Florida; critics claimed that voting machines which used punched cards to tabulate votes generated improperly rendered records of several hundred votes, spread out over an entire state, which allegedly tipped the vote in favor of George W. Bush over Albert Gore. Chads are paper particles created when holes are made in a computer punched tape or punch card. ... Map The U.S. presidential election of 2000 took place on Election Day, Tuesday, November 7. ... State nickname: Sunshine State Other U.S. States Capital Tallahassee Largest city Jacksonville Governor Jeb Bush Official languages English Area 170,451 km² (22nd)  - Land 137,374 km²  - Water 30,486 km² (17. ... A voting machine is a device to record and register votes to be counted as per any voting system, with or without printing a ballot for the voter to verify. ... Order: 43rd President Vice President: Dick Cheney Term of office: January 20, 2001 – Present (Current Term will end on January 20, 2009. ... Albert Arnold Gore Jr. ...

Some consider it to be a minor scandal that punch card-based voting machines have continued to be used over the next several years, including the 2004 U.S. presidential race. Others who have used the system for years without the slightest problem cannot understand how it could be such an issue. Presidential electoral votes by state. ...

See also

• History of computing hardware
• computer storage (memory)
• Herman Hollerith

Computing hardware has been an essential component of the process of calculation and data storage since it became useful for numerical values to be processed and shared. ... The terms storage and memory refer to the parts of a digital computer that retain physical state (data) for some interval of time, possibly even after electrical power to the computer is turned off. ... Herman Hollerith Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was an American businessman and the promulgator of the punch card. ...

External links

• Doug Jones' Punch Card history site
• Various punched card codes
• The Undead - Wired magazine article about modern day use of punch cards
• UNIVAC Punch Card Gallery
• A review of the book IBM and the Holocaust (ISBN 0609808990) by Edwin Black, an interesting take on IBM's involvement with Nazi Germany.

In part,