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Punched card

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Tabulating Machine Company
Company typeCompany
IndustryData processing equipment
Founded1896; 130 years ago (1896)
FounderHerman Hollerith
FateMerged into Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) in 1911
SuccessorComputing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), later IBM
Headquarters
United States

A punched card—also referred to as a punch card or Hollerith card—is a rigid paper medium designed to encode and handle digital or analog data through holes placed in specific locations. This concept traces back to textile machinery such as the Jacquard loom from the 19th century. The first extensive use of punched cards for data processing was implemented by Herman Hollerith during the 1890 United States Census. Hollerith's advancements eventually gave rise to enterprises that later became IBM.

Throughout the twentieth century, punched cards played a crucial role in data management across commercial, scientific, and governmental sectors, especially within unit record equipment and early digital computers. The IBM 80-column card, introduced in 1928, became a widely adopted standard for data entry, storage, and programming tasks. Although magnetic storage and interactive terminals largely replaced punched cards by the 1980s, their influence persisted in computing norms such as the 80-character line length. As late as 2012, some voting machines still utilized punched cards. They continue to symbolize the origins of automation and computing technology.

History

The idea of using punched holes for control and information storage emerged independently on several occasions without clear knowledge of earlier inventions.

Precursors

In 1725, Basile Bouchon introduced the use of punched paper tape to regulate loom operation, improvements later made by Jean-Baptiste Falcon and Jacques Vaucanson. These early systems controlled weaving patterns but still depended on manual operation.

By 1804, Joseph Marie Jacquard showcased an automated loom mechanism employing interconnected punched cards arranged in chains. Each card dictated warp shedding and shuttle movement for one weaving cycle.

Semyon Korsakov is credited with being among the first to suggest using punched cards for storing and retrieving information, presenting his approach in 1832.

Charles Babbage envisioned "Number Cards" featuring holes to transfer numerical data through mechanical levers in his design for the Calculating Engine; however, he never constructed a functional model.

In 1881, Jules Carpentier created a device called the Mélographe Répétiteur that recorded and replayed harmonium music via punched cards encoding notes as hole patterns. By 1887, this concept split into two instruments: the Melograph, which captured key presses, and the Melotrope, which reproduced the music.

20th century

At the close of the 19th century, Herman Hollerith developed punched card technology for processing census data during the 1890 United States census, drawing inspiration from both Jacquard loom mechanisms and railway punch ticket systems used to prevent fraud by encoding passenger details. Hollerith's tabulating machines could read punched cards by counting holes and, by the 1920s, perform simple arithmetic functions.

Hollerith established the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896. In 1911, it merged with three other firms to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), which was renamed IBM in 1924. Other significant companies included Britain's The Tabulator Limited (1902), Germany's Dehomag (1911), American firms like Powers Accounting Machine Company (1911) and Remington Rand (1927), as well as France's H.W. Egli Bull (1931). These organizations produced punched cards along with unit record machines well into the era of electronic computing.

Both IBM and Remington Rand linked their punched card sales with leasing agreements for their machines, practices that contravened the US 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act. In 1932, legal action was taken against both companies; Remington Rand settled promptly while IBM contested until losing a Supreme Court ruling in 1936 that restricted IBM's control over card specifications.

By 1937, IBM operated thirty-two presses at Endicott, New York, manufacturing between five and ten million punched cards daily. Punched cards were also used as official documents such as U.S. Government checks and savings bonds. During World War II, Allied codebreaking efforts at locations including Bletchley Park relied heavily on punched card equipment producing around two million cards weekly. In Nazi Germany, punched cards facilitated censuses and other administrative tasks (see IBM and the Holocaust).

By mid-century, punched card technology had become indispensable for business data handling. The warning "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate" was commonly printed on many cards processed by corporations and government agencies.

In 1956, IBM agreed to a consent decree limiting its share of U.S. punched card production to fifty percent by 1962—a shift coinciding with leadership changes under Thomas Watson Jr.. The Univac UNITYPER, introduced in the 1950s, brought magnetic tape into data entry processes. Throughout the 1960s, magnetic tape gradually supplanted punched cards as primary data storage due to technological advances. Mohawk Data Sciences marketed a magnetic tape encoder in 1965 intended to replace keypunch devices with moderate market acceptance.

Punched cards remained prevalent for entering data and programs until their decline in the mid-1980s when more affordable magnetic disk storage solutions and interactive terminals on minicomputers rendered them obsolete. Their influence persists in conventions like the standardized 80-column text format seen in terminals such as the IBM 3270, which maintained backward compatibility despite evolving graphical user interfaces.

Nomenclature

The expressions punched card, punch card, and punchcard were widely utilized, alongside terms like IBM card and Hollerith card—the latter named after Herman Hollerith. Initially, IBM documentation referred to these as "IBM card" or "punched card," later abbreviating to simply "card" or "cards". Cards were frequently identified by their character capacity, such as an 80-column card. A collection of cards processed as a unit is termed a card deck or just a deck. The tiny paper fragments removed during punching are known as chad or, in IBM terminology, chips. Designated segments of columns on a card reserved for particular data elements are called fields. The initial card within a fixed-information set is referred to as the master card, with subsequent cards labeled as detail cards.

Formats

Hollerith’s punched cards for the 1890 U.S. census began as blank sheets. Over time, cards typically incorporated printed guides indicating hole locations, field labels, vertical separators, logos, and other details. There were standardized "general purpose" designs (for example, the IBM 5081). Distinctions between master and detail cards were made by cutting diagonals in specific upper corners, facilitating machine sorting. Most cards featured a single cut in an upper corner to denote orientation or differentiate types.

Hollerith's Early Cards

Herman Hollerith secured three patents in 1889 covering electromechanical tabulating machines that utilized both paper tape and rectangular punched cards. His patent filed on January 8 included cards printed with templates marking hole positions near the edges, intended for use with a railroad conductor's ticket punch, leaving the center area free for handwritten notes. Drawing inspiration from railroad tickets that encoded passenger information, Hollerith engineered the pantograph-style "keyboard punch" to minimize errors and operator fatigue. This device featured an enlarged diagram displaying hole locations; additionally, a printed reading board was provided for manual interpretation.

Hollerith experimented with various card dimensions; for the 1890 census he recommended Manila stock cards. These census cards had round holes arranged in 12 rows and 24 columns. Eventually, the standard size settled at , matching the dimensions of U.S. currency from 1862 to 1923—this facilitated efficient storage of millions of cards across the country.

His system assigned particular hole groupings specific meanings (such as gender or marital status). The tabulating machine incorporated up to 40 counters capable of registering counts up to 9,999 through dual dials. Counters were linked to holes or hole combinations using relay logic. Subsequent designs introduced a 45-column card featuring ten rows numbered 0–9, enabling multi-digit numeric fields that tabulators could sum instead of merely counting individual cards. Illustrations of Hollerith’s 45-column punched cards appear in Comrie’s studies on tabulating machines applied to lunar calculations.

IBM 80-Column Format and Character Codes

By the late 1920s, there was increasing demand for enhanced data capacity on punched cards. In 1927, IBM President Thomas J. Watson Sr. commissioned inventors Clair D. Lake and J. Royden Pierce to develop methods for increasing data density without enlarging the physical card.[1] Pierce suggested maintaining round holes and 45 columns but increasing data per column; Lake proposed using rectangular holes to fit 80 columns on the same sized card, nearly doubling capacity.[2] Watson selected Lake’s concept, which was introduced as The IBM Card, partly to secure patent rights and gain competitive advantage.[3]

The 1928 IBM card featured rectangular holes arranged in 80 columns by 10 rows.[4] Cards measured approximately , with a thickness around 0.007 inches and about 143 cards per inch when stacked.[5] By 1930, two additional rows were added to support alphabetic characters; in 1964 IBM adopted rounded corners.[6] Cards were distributed in boxes containing 2,000 units or as continuous forms and often came pre-numbered or pre-punched for document tracking.[7]

Initially designed for binary yes/no responses, support extended over time to include numeric, alphabetic, and special characters by utilizing zone and digit punches within each column.[8] Arithmetic signs could be represented by overpunching the rightmost column. Zone punches also served operational purposes such as identifying master cards during processing.[9]

In 1931, IBM introduced uppercase letters and special characters through specific combinations of zone and digit punches.[10] Additional characters necessary for various languages were accommodated by adjusting punch patterns accordingly.[11] The development of EBCDIC in 1964 expanded punch combinations to six per column, enabling sophisticated character encoding compatible across IBM and other manufacturers’ equipment.[12][13] The American National Standard established in 1969 defined punch codes for 128 characters under the designation Hollerith Punched Card Code.[11]

For computing applications, binary formats treated each hole position as a bit, permitting all possible hole combinations. For instance, IBM models 701 and 704 employed row binary format reading data from 72 columns into memory as two separate 36-bit words per row—totaling 864 bits per card.[14] Columns numbered 73 through 80 typically stored sequential numbers used for sorting and reconstructing decks within programming languages such as FORTRAN.

IBM card reader models like the 3504, 3505, and unit 3525 utilized an alternative encoding called card image format—each column encoded into two bytes representing its hole pattern—requiring approximately 160 bytes (1280 bits) per card.[15]

To facilitate user interaction with punched cards, IBM key punch machines including models IBM 026, IBM 029, and IBM 129 printed human-readable characters above each column.

"Punched lace cards," where every possible hole was punched out, were notorious pranks that caused mechanical jams due to compromised structural integrity.[16]

The IBM standard of an 80-column punched card became widely adopted across industries—commonly referred to simply as IBM cards—even though other manufacturers produced compatible versions.[17]

A prevalent variant is the IBM 5081 format—a general-purpose layout lacking predefined field divisions—that features digits printed corresponding to punch positions across all eighty columns. This design was also embraced by other punched card producers.

IBM Stub card and Short card designs

Long-format cards were designed with perforated stubs at both ends; when these stubs were detached, the remaining portion formed an 80-column card, with the detached segment known as a stub card. Additionally, 80-column cards with scoring could be divided into a short card and a stub card. The short cards maintained compatibility with various IBM equipment, while stub cards, typically measuring 51 columns in length, were utilized for purposes such as tagging, labeling, or creating carbon copies.

IBM 40-column Port-A-Punch card design

Released in 1958 by IBM's Supplies Division, the Port-A-Punch was a handheld device that allowed users to quickly and accurately punch holes manually into specially scored IBM punched cards. It was engineered for immediate data entry tasks—including inventories, job tickets, and survey forms—thereby removing the necessity to first write or type data onto source documents.

IBM 96-column configuration

IBM introduced a compact 96-column punched card in 1969 alongside the IBM System/3 computer system. This format featured small (1 mm) round holes arranged in three rows of 32 characters each, plus an additional fourth row capable of printing. Data encoding utilized either 6-bit BCD or 8-bit EBCDIC codes. Each column combined punch positions to represent bytes, allowing storage of up to 64 bytes per card. Despite its advanced structure, this proprietary IBM format experienced limited market penetration and was soon superseded by the 1973 IBM 3740 Data Entry System, which employed 8-inch floppy disks. The underlying mechanism found a second life in 1978 as part of print-only receipt printers within IBM's IBM 3624 ATM machines.

Powers/Remington Rand/UNIVAC 90-column configuration

Tracing back to Hollerith's original 45-column round-hole design, the Powers/Remington Rand format evolved in 1930 into a 90-column card by encoding two characters per column across 45 columns. Each card featured two sets of six rows labeled as 0, 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, and 9. Numeric punches combined even-numbered rows with a '9' punch; alphabetic and special symbols required three or more punches per character. This layout provided greater data density compared to earlier IBM formats.

Powers-Samas formats

The British company Powers-Samas produced multiple punched card formats tailored for their unit record equipment. Their initial offering was a 45-column card with round holes. Subsequently, they introduced cards with 36, 40, and 65 columns, along with a distinctive 130-column card created by splitting the card into two rows of 65 columns each, featuring five punch positions per character space. Additionally, they offered a 21-column card similar in concept to the IBM Stub card.

Mark sense format

Mark sense (electrographic) cards were pioneered by Reynold B. Johnson at IBM and contained printed ovals designed to be filled in using a specialized electrographic pencil. These cards often began with punched data such as item identifiers and locations; supplementary details like quantities were recorded by marking the ovals. Card punches equipped to detect mark sense markings then translated these annotations into punched data on the card.

Aperture format

Aperture cards are characterized by a cut-out window on the right side housing a 35 mm microfilm image. Commonly employed for engineering drawings across various fields, these cards also incorporate punched and printed information—such as drawing numbers—on the remaining surface area.

Manufacturing

Fred M. Carroll of IBM pioneered rotary presses specifically designed for producing punched cards, including a 1921 model capable of processing 460 cards per minute (cpm). By 1936, he unveiled an advanced press featuring a printing cylinder that doubled the speed to 850 cpm, significantly transforming IBM's card manufacturing operations. Throughout the period from 1930 to 1950, Carroll’s innovations in press technology accounted for as much as one-quarter of IBM’s total profits.

Unused printing plates—cylindrical and matching the size of IBM cards—became sought-after memorabilia among collectors and were frequently repurposed as desktop pen holders.

In the mid-1930s, the price for a box containing 1,000 punched cards was $1.05 when adjusted for inflation.

Cultural impact

Although punched cards have largely become obsolete, their legacy profoundly influenced the 20th century and continues to be evident in various cultural and institutional expressions:

  • In 2004, artist and architect Maya Lin created "Input," a public art piece at Ohio University that mimics the appearance of a punched card when viewed from above.
  • Tucker Hall at the University of Missouri – Columbia is known for window designs rumored to spell out "M-I-Z beat k-U!" using a punched card motif, reflecting local collegiate rivalry.
  • The Engineering Research Building at the University of Wisconsin – Madison incorporated exterior window patterns inspired by punched cards during its construction in 1966.
  • Gamble Hall at the University of North Dakota features light-colored brickwork arranged to resemble a punched card spelling "University of North Dakota."
  • During the 1964–1965 Free Speech Movement, punched cards became symbols of bureaucratic impersonality and alienation, serving as focal points in protests against rigid registration systems.
  • The enduring design of the 80-column punched card influenced computer terminal layouts; even by 2014, default widths like Microsoft Windows’ command prompt remained set at 80 columns. Certain file formats such as FITS and satellite tracking data continue to utilize 80-character card formats.
  • Arthur C. Clarke’s 1946 short story "Rescue Party" featured punched cards storing detailed personal data on individuals, illustrating early conceptualizations of data storage prior to widespread computer use.
  • Comedian Lily Tomlin humorously referenced punch card usage in her track "I.B.M." from the album This Is a Recording, highlighting their role in billing processes at AT&T Corporation.

Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate

A frequently printed warning on punched cards intended for public handling or return was "Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate" (known in the UK as "Do not bend, spike, fold or mutilate"). This phrase, coined by Charles A. Phillips after World War II, became widely recognized despite many being unfamiliar with the term "spindle." It gained cultural notoriety through satire, including buttons worn by Berkeley students in the 1960s bearing the message: "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. I am a student." The phrase also inspired a 1970 novel by Doris Miles Disney, a made-for-television film released in 1971, and a Canadian short film titled Do Not Fold, Staple, Spindle or Mutilate produced in 1967.

Standards

  • ANSI INCITS 21-1967 (R2002), Rectangular Holes in Twelve-Row Punched Cards—defines the dimensions and placement of rectangular apertures on twelve-row punched cards.
  • ANSI X3.11-1990 American National Standard Specifications for General Purpose Paper Cards for Information Processing
  • ANSI X3.26-1980 (R1991) Hollerith Punched Card Code
  • ISO 1681:1973 Information processing – Unpunched paper cards – Specification
  • ISO 6586:1980 Data processing – Implementation of ISO 7-bit and 8-bit coded character sets on punched cards—specifies character encodings compatible with the Hollerith Code for punched card data storage.

Punched card devices

The handling of punched cards utilized a variety of equipment, including:

See also

Further reading

  • Do not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate: The "hole" story of punched cards by George A. Fierheller (2014), Stewart Publishing & Printing, Markham, Ontario, Canada. A user-friendly volume featuring photographs and detailed descriptions of numerous unit record devices.
  • How to Succeed At Cards (1963), an IBM film presenting the manufacturing process and quality assurance of IBM punched cards.
  • Mathematical Machines: Digital Computers, Chapter 6 Punched Cards by Francis Joseph Murray (1961), Columbia University Press. Contains explanations and illustrations of Samas punched cards.
  • Annotated Bibliography of Films in Automation, Data Processing, and Computer Science by Martin B. Solomon Jr. and Nora Geraldine Lovan (1967), University of Kentucky.
  • "The Undead" by George Dyson, Wired magazine (1999). Discusses the continued use of punched cards during the 1990s (Cardamation).
  • "Punched Cards: A Brief Tutorial" by Robert V. Williams, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (2002). Provides an overview of punched card technology.

External links

  1. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named ibm/history/punched-card
  2. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Lake_1928
  3. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named IBM_2012
  4. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Pugh_IBM
  5. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Boyd_2007
  6. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named IBM_OldNew
  7. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named IBM_1953
  8. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named ReferenceA_1961
  9. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named IBM_1959_2
  10. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Rojas_2001
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Mackenzie_1980
  12. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Winter_80
  13. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Jones_2
  14. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named IBM_1953_Principles
  15. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named IBM GA21-9124-5
  16. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Raymond_1991
  17. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Maxfield_2011
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