Punched card

Punched cards were a very popular medium for input/output and data storage in the early period of computer usage. Data was stored in them by the presence, or absence, of holes punched in pre-determined locations.

They were actually a hangover from a pre-electronic stage of data processing; Herman Hollerith pioneered the use of cards for data storage for the 1890 U.S. census, and IBM became a world-wide colossus before World War II on its dominance of card processing.

Physically, they were stiff, thin cardboard, typically slightly less than .01 inches thick. A number of different formats were used over time, but the most popular by far was IBM's format, introduced in 1928: they were 7-3⁄8 by 3-1⁄4 inches in size, with rectangular holes in 80 columns of 12 rows.

A card could hold up to 80 alphanumeric characters, one per column: numbers were indicated by a single punch in rows 1-10; letters were indicated by a punch in row 10/11/12, plus a punch in rows 1-9. Cards could also hold binary data, with more than two holes per column; by convention, a 7 and 9 punch in the first column indicated that the rest of the card held binary data.

In the pre-electronic era, wire brushes were used to sense the presence or absence of a hole; later on, optical sensors were common.

Further reading

• Lars Heide, Punched-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880-1945, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 2009
• James W. Cortada, Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created, 1865-1956, Princeton University, Princeton, 1993 - covers the punched-card information handling age

External links

• Punched cards
  • A brief illustrated technical history
• IBM cards used round holes until the early 1930s
• Who Invented the 80 column, Rectangular Hole Punched Card?