|
Before the advent of electronic computers, data processing was performed using electromechanical devices called unit record equipment, electric accounting machines (EAM) or tabulating machines. A data processing shop would have at least one of the most of the machine types. Data processing consisted of feeding decks of punch cards through the various machines in a carefully choreographed progression. The flow of card decks between the machines was typically hand-drawn on large sheets of paper using standardised symbols for the various functions. The tower of a personal computer. ...
Punched cards (or Hollerith cards, or IBM cards), are pieces of stiff paper that contain digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. ...
Unit record machines were as ubiquitous in industry and government in the first half of the twentieth century as computers became in the second half. They allowed large volume, sophisticated, data-processing tasks to be accomplished long before modern (electronic) computers were invented. This data processing was accomplished by processing decks of punched cards through various unit record machines in a carefully choreographed progression. This progression, or flow, from machine to machine was often planned and documented with drawings that used standardised symbols for the various machine functions – drawings that today would be called flowcharts. The machines all had high-speed mechanical feeders to process from around one hundred cards per minute, to 2,000 cards per minute, sensing punched holes with either electrical or optical sensors. The operation of many machines was directed by the use of a removable control panel. Initially all machines were constructed using electromechanical counters and relays. Electronic components were introduced on some machines beginning in the late 1940s. (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar (often from (1900 to 1999 in common usage). ...
The tower of a personal computer. ...
Data processing is any computer process that converts data into information. ...
Punched cards (or Hollerith cards, or IBM cards), are pieces of stiff paper that contain digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. ...
A simple flowchart for what to do if a lamp doesnt work A flowchart (also spelled flow-chart and flow chart) is a schematic representation of a process. ...
Plugboard. ...
History Herman Hollerith developed punched card and unit record technology for the 1890 census and founded the Tabulating Machine Company (1896) which was one of three companies that merged to form Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR), later renamed IBM. IBM manufactured and marketed a variety of unit record machines for creating, sorting, and tabulating punched cards, even after expanding into computers in the late 1950s. IBM developed punch card technology into a powerful tool for business data-processing and produced an extensive line of general-purpose unit record machines. By 1950, the IBM card and IBM unit record machines had become ubiquitous in industry and government. The warning often printed on cards that were to be individually handled, "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate," became a motto for the post-World War II era (even though though many people had no idea what spindle meant). The largest supplier of unit record equipment was IBM and this article largely reflects IBM practice and terminology. Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was an American statistician who developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards to rapidly tabulate statistics from millions of pieces of data. ...
1896 (MDCCCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ...
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. ...
The 1950s was the decade spanning the years 1950 to 1959. ...
Combatants Major Allied powers: United Kingdom Soviet Union United States Republic of China and others Major Axis powers: Nazi Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman Chiang Kai-Shek Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead...
A spindle (or colloquially, a spike) is an upright spike used to hold papers waiting for processing. ...
now. ...
Punched cards The basic unit of data storage was the 80-column punched card. Each punched column represented a single digit, letter or special character. Data values consisted of a field of adjacent columns. An employee number might occupy 5 columns; hourly pay rate, 3 columns; hours actually worked in a given week, 2 columns; department number 3 columns; project charge code 6 columns and so on. Punched cards (or Hollerith cards, or IBM cards), are pieces of stiff paper that contain digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. ...
Keypunching Original data was usually punched into cards by workers, often women, known as key punch operators. Their work was often checked by a second operator using a verifier machine. Cards were also produced automatically by various unit record machines and later by computer output devices. Image File history File links IBM 029 Keypunch, used in the 1960s and 1970s for entering data on punch cards. ...
Image File history File links IBM 029 Keypunch, used in the 1960s and 1970s for entering data on punch cards. ...
IBM 029 keypunch. ...
IBM 029 keypunch. ...
Sorting A major activity in any unit record shop was sorting decks of punch card into the proper order as determined by information punched in the card. The same deck might be sorted differently depending on the processing step. Sorters, like the IBM 80 series Card Sorters, sorted an input deck into one of 13 output bins depending on which hole was punched in a selected column. The 13th bin was for blanks and rejects. Sorting an input deck into ascending sequence on a multiple column field, such as an employee number, was done by a radix sort. In computer science and mathematics, a sorting algorithm is an algorithm that puts elements of a list in a certain order. ...
Later model IBM card sorter, type 84 The IBM 80 Electric Punched Card Sorting Machine, was introduced by IBM in 1925. ...
Bucket sort, or bin sort, is a sort algorithm that works by partitioning an array into a finite number of buckets and then sorting each bucket. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...
Data processing tasks typically ran on a daily batch processing cycle. All the data cards punched during the day were sorted and merged with a master deck, which was then tabulated. Merge algorithms are a family of algorithms that run sequentially over multiple sorted lists, typically producing more sorted lists as output. ...
Tabulating
 An IBM 407 at US Army's Redstone Arsenal in 1961. Reports and summary data were generated by accounting or tabulating machines. The sorted deck was fed through the tabulating machine and each card was printed on its own line. Selected fields from each card were added to the value of one of several counters. At some signal, say a card with a special punch indicating it was a master card, a summary line would be produced containing the summed values. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (576x720, 55 KB) ファイルã®æ¦‚è¦ From en:mage:Ibm407 tabulator 1961 01. ...
Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (576x720, 55 KB) ファイルã®æ¦‚è¦ From en:mage:Ibm407 tabulator 1961 01. ...
tabulating machine constructed by Hollerith The tabulating machine was a machine designed to assist in tabulations. ...
- For more details on this topic, see IBM 407.
For many applications, the volume of paper produced by tabulators required other machines, not considered to be unit record machines, to ease paper handling. The IBM 407 Accounting Machine was the culmination of a long line of IBM tabulating equipment, dating back to the days of Herman Hollerith. ...
- A decollator separated multi-part printed forms into separate stacks of printout and removed the carbon paper.
- A burster separated the perforations between pages of fan-fold output.
Card punching
 A reproducing punch, like this one from IBM, could make exact copies of a deck of cards. Card punching machines included: 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. ...
- Gang punch - these would produce a large number of identically punched cards--for example, for inventory tickets.
- Reproducing punch - these could reproduce a deck of cards in its entirety or they might just reproduce selected fields. A payroll master deck might be reproduced at the end of a pay period with the hours worked and net pay fields blank and ready for the next pay period's data. Computer programmers who created their programs in the form of punch card decks used these to make backups.
- Summary punch - these were attached to tabulating machines and could punch new cards with details and totals from the tabulating machine.
- Mark sense reader - these would detect pencil marks on bubbles printed on the card and punch the corresponding data values into the card.
Later "document origination machines" such as the IBM 519 could perform all of the above operations. The IBM 519 Electric Document Originating Machine, introduced in 1946, was the last in a series of unit record machines designed for automated production of punch cards. ...
Collating and interpreting A collator had two input hoppers and four or more output hoppers. These machines could merge or match card decks based on the control panel's program. An interpreter would print the values of columns along the top of the card. The columns to be printed could be selected and even reordered based on the machines control panel wiring.
Programming
 IBM 402 Accounting Machine plug-board. The operation of most unit record equipment (except for sorters) was directed by a plug-board control panel (IBM did not use the term "programming" for these machines). The panels had a matrix of holes organized into groups. Wires with metal ferrules at each end were place in the holes to make connections. The output from some card column positions might be fed into a tabulating machine's counter, for example. A shop would typically have separate plug-boards for each task a machine was used for. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1024x768, 229 KB) Summary IBM 402 w:plug-board, wiring side. ...
Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1024x768, 229 KB) Summary IBM 402 w:plug-board, wiring side. ...
Plugboard. ...
Unit record equipment in the computer age Early computer installations used punched cards for program entry and storage. A typical corporate or university computer lab would have a room full of key punch machines for programmer use. An IBM 407 Accounting Machine might be set up to allow newly created or edited programs to be listed (printed out on fan-fold paper) for proof reading. An IBM 519 might be provided to reproduce program decks for backup. The 519 could also punch sequential numbers in columns 73-80 of COBOL or Fortran program decks. Those languages and others did not use those columns; the use of only 72 columns is a tradition tracing back to the IBM 704 card reader. An IBM 80 series sorter would be used to put things back in order if a sequenced deck was dropped. A quicker, but less effective, protection against dropped card decks was drawing a diagonal line across the top of the deck with a marking pen. The IBM 407 Accounting Machine was the culmination of a long line of IBM tabulating equipment, dating back to the days of Herman Hollerith. ...
The IBM 519 Electric Document Originating Machine, introduced in 1946, was the last in a series of unit record machines designed for automated production of punch cards. ...
COBOL is a third-generation programming language, and one of the oldest programming languages still in active use. ...
Fortran (previously FORTRAN[1]) is a general-purpose[2], procedural,[3] imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing. ...
The IBM 704, the first mass-produced computer with floating point arithmetic hardware, was introduced by IBM in April, 1956. ...
Later model IBM card sorter, type 84 The IBM 80 Electric Punched Card Sorting Machine, was introduced by IBM in 1925. ...
Early mid-sized commercial computers, such as the IBM 1401 were designed to work with punch card operations and allowed more complex reporting. However many shops soon began using magnetic tape as their primary storage medium, using cards primarily for data input. 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. ...
Compact audio cassette Magnetic tape is a non-volatile storage medium consisting of a magnetic coating on a thin plastic strip. ...
Many organizations were loath to alter systems that were working, so production unit record installations remained in operation long after computers offered faster and more cost effective solutions. Specialized uses of punch cards, including toll collection, microfilm aperture cards, and punch card voting, keep unit record equipment in use into the twenty-first century. Microfilm machines may be available at libraries or record archives. ...
Chads are paper particles created when holes are made in a computer punched tape or punch card. ...
The IBM System/3, the original ancestor of the entire IBM midrange computer product line, was developed as a replacement for plugboard-programmable unit record machines. now. ...
A System 3 punch card. ...
IBM has made several models of midrange computers over the years: the System/3, System/34, System/36, System/38, and finally AS/400 (recently rechristened the iSeries). ...
Modern-day applications of unit record concepts Although unit-record equipment is no longer used, the underlying concepts of unit-record-style processing are still widely used when processing very large numbers of records on tight production schedules. (Consider, for example, the processing of telephone-call records as the input to a billing system. This is a task which might easily involve tens of millions of records per day. The task is essential to the operation of the business, and must be done daily or continuously...)
The basic technique revolves around the use of sorting, and subsequent processing of the sorted file takes advantage of the fact that the file has been sorted. Sorting techniques have been extensively studied in computer science and are extremely efficient. When a file is sorted, not only are the key values placed in a predictable collating sequence, but it is now known that: Sorting refers to a process of arranging items in some sequence and/or in different sets, and accordingly, it has two common, yet distinct meanings: ordering: aranging items of the same kind, class, nature, etc. ...
Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ...
The term collating sequence refers to the order in which character strings should be placed when sorting them. ...
- all occurrences of any given key value will necessarily be adjacent to one another, and...
- if a particular key is not found where it is supposed to be, then it does not exist in the file at all. No further searching is required.
For example, in a file sorted by zip code, given the stream ...12345 12348 12348 12460... you can see that the key 12348 occurs exactly twice and that the key 12352 does not occur at all. Notice that you can reach these two conclusions with certainty, just by looking at these records, even if this were part of a stream containing millions of records, because the file is known to be sorted by zip-code. In fact, unit-record processing programs generally only have to consider two records ... "this" one and the "previous" one ... to make all of their decisions.) The Unix utility uniq works in this fashion. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...
When a sorted file of transactions is used to update a master file that is sorted the same way, as in (for example) a merge algorithm, both files can be processed sequentially; that is to say, random access is not needed, and expensive seek time is avoided. When millions, or even billions, of records need to be processed in a short (and predictable) amount of time, this economy can make all the difference. (Even a mechanical operation that takes "just 1/1000 of a second" to complete, if repeated 10 million times, adds more than two hours to the processing time! Furthermore, the reasons for this delay are purely mechanical, regardless of the computational speed of the computer, and they are a severe bottleneck to the entire process.) Merge algorithms are a family of algorithms that run sequentially over multiple sorted lists, typically producing more sorted lists as output. ...
In computer science, random access is the ability to access a random element of a group in equal time. ...
Seek time is one of the several delays associated with reading or writing data on a computers disk drive. ...
A bottleneck is literally the neck of a glass or pottery bottle. ...
Guide to the unit record equipment articles The punch card (or Hollerith card) is a recording medium for holding information for use by automated data processing machines. ...
Mark sense is a trade name used by IBM for punched card technology that allowed cards marked with a pencil to be converted into punched cards. ...
A lace card from the early 1970s. ...
Manual card punches (not keypunches) A key punch is a machine for manually entering data onto punch cards. ...
Plugboard. ...
The IBM 550 numerical interpreter. ...
The IBM 557 Alphabetic Interpreter allowed holes in punch cards to be interpreted and the Hollerith punch card characters printed on any row or column, programmed by the means of a wiring plug board. ...
Later model IBM card sorter, type 84 The IBM 80 Electric Punched Card Sorting Machine, was introduced by IBM in 1925. ...
The IBM 513 Reproducing Punch was a card punching machine developed by IBM. The machine could perform these functions: Reproducing all or part of the data on a deck of punched cards. ...
The IBM 514 Reproducing Punch was a card punching machine developed by IBM. The machine could perform these functions: Reproducing all or part of the data on a deck of punched cards. ...
The IBM 519 Electric Document Originating Machine, introduced in 1946, was the last in a series of unit record machines designed for automated production of punch cards. ...
tabulating machine constructed by Hollerith The tabulating machine was a machine designed to assist in tabulations. ...
The IBM 407 Accounting Machine was the culmination of a long line of IBM tabulating equipment, dating back to the days of Herman Hollerith. ...
This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...
The IBM 101 Statistical Sorting Machine (from IBM: A22-0502-1): ...combines in one unit the functions of sorting, counting, accumulating, balancing, editing, and printing of summaries of facts recorded in IBM cards. ...
The IBM 602 Calculating Punch was an electromechanical plug-board programmed calculator capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, introduced by IBM in 1946. ...
The IBM 604 was a plug-board programmable Electronic Calculating Punch introduced in 1948, and was a machine on which considerable expectations for the future of IBM were pinned and in which a corresponding amount of planning talent was invested. ...
The IBM Card-Programmed Electronic Calculator or CPC was announced by IBM in May 1949. ...
UNIVAC 120 The Remington Rand 409 plugboard programmed punch card calculator, designed in 1949, was sold in two models: the UNIVAC 60 (1952) and the UNIVAC 120 (1953). ...
The IBM 632 was a valve-and-relay driven basic (very basic) accounting machine, introduced in 1958, that was available in seven different models. ...
See also The following is a list of products from the International Business Machines (IBM) Corporation, spanning from early-to-mid-20th-century punched card machinery, time clocks, and typewriters, via mainframe computers and minicomputers, to microprocessors, PCs, laptop PCs, and more. ...
Powers Accounting Machine Company (also known as Powers Tabulating Machine Company) was an early 20th century tabulating_machine company. ...
A Remington Rand branded typewriter Remington Rand was an early American computer manufacturer, best known as the original maker of the UNIVAC I, and now part of Unisys. ...
// The Remington Rand years (1950 to 1955) Calculating devices UNIVAC 60 UNIVAC 120 Computer systems UNIVAC I UNIVAC 1101 UNIVAC 1102 UNIVAC 1103 Peripherals Storage UNISERVO tape drive Display and print UNIVAC High speed printer 600 line/min printer Offline tape handling units UNIPRINTER 10 char/s printer with tape...
The British Tabulating Machine Company (IBM) was a firm which manufactured and sold Hollerith punched-card machines and other data-processing equipment. ...
Powers-Samas was a British company who sold punched card equipment. ...
Norwegian engineer Fredrik Rosing Bull (1882–1925) was the inventor/designer of improved punched card machines, based on which resulting patents French multinational computer corporation Groupe Bull was founded in 1931. ...
Wallace John Eckert (June 19, 1902 – August 24, 1971) was a statistician and computational specialist at the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau at Columbia University. ...
Leslie John Comrie (15 August 1893 – 11 December 1950) was an astronomer and a pioneer in mechanical computation. ...
References Typical machines for unit record processing were: Wallace John Eckert (June 19, 1902 – August 24, 1971) was a statistician and computational specialist at the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau at Columbia University. ...
Columbia University is a private university whose main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. ...
Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was an American statistician who developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards to rapidly tabulate statistics from millions of pieces of data. ...
Columbia University is a private university whose main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. ...
Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was an American statistician who developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards to rapidly tabulate statistics from millions of pieces of data. ...
Keypunching
- IBM (December, 1964). IBM Reference Manual: IBM 24 Card Punch, IBM 26 Printing Card Punch. A24-0520-2.
- IBM (December, 1962). IBM Reference Manual: IBM 56 Card Verifer. A24-1018-1.
Sorting - IBM (December, 1959). IBM 83 Sorter: Manual of Operation. 222-66395-5.
Collating - IBM 077 photo
- IBM (1949). IBM 89 Alphabetic Collator: Manual of Operation. 22-5692-1.
Tabulating - IBM (1953). IBM 407 Accounting Machine: Manual of Operation. 22-5765-7.
Card Punching - IBM (October, 1959). IBM Reference Manual: 513, 514 Reproducing Punches. A24-1002-2.
Interpreting - IBM (1958). IBM 548, 552 Interpreters: Manual of Operation. 224-6384-2.
Calculating - IBM (1954). IBM 604 Electronic Calculating Punch: Manual of Operation. 22-5279-10.
Statistical - IBM (1958). IBM Reference Manual: 101 Electronic Statistical Machine. A22-0502-0.
The following provide summaries of a number of unit record machines. - IBM (July, 1959). IBM Operators Guide: Reference Manual. A24-1010-0.
- IBM (August 20, 1957). IBM Equipment Summary.
Notes
External links |
Feeds |
Contact