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A 12-row/80-column IBM punched card from the mid-twentieth century. A punched card (also punch card[1] or punched-card[2]) is a piece of card stock that stores digital data using punched holes. Punched cards were once common in data processing and the control of automated machines. Punched cards were widely used in the 20th century, where unit ...
A punched card is a flexible write-once medium that encodes data, most commonly 80 characters. Groups or "decks" of cards form programs and collections of data. The term is often used interchangeably with punch card, the difference being that an unused card is a "punch card," but once information had been encoded by punching holes in the card ...
Punched card input/output. A computer punched card reader or just computer card reader is a computer input device used to read computer programs in either source or executable form and data from punched cards. A computer card punch is a computer output device that punches holes in cards. Sometimes computer punch card readers were combined with ...
The resulting paper tape, also called a "chain of cards", was stronger and simpler both to create and to repair. This led to the concept of communicating data not as a stream of individual cards, but as one "continuous card" (or tape). Paper tapes constructed from punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century for controlling looms.
Hollerith punched card. The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information stored on punched cards. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. Later models were widely used for business applications such as accounting and inventory ...
A vacuum-tube computer, now termed a first-generation computer, is a computer that uses vacuum tubes for logic circuitry. While the history of mechanical aids to computation goes back centuries, if not millennia, the history of vacuum tube computers is confined to the middle of the 20th century. Lee De Forest invented the triode in 1906.
The term unit record equipment also refers to peripheral equipment attached to computers that reads or writes unit records, e.g., card readers, card punches, printers, MICR readers. IBM was the largest supplier of unit record equipment and this article largely reflects IBM practice and terminology.
The Votomatic vote recorder, a punched card voting machine originally developed in the mid-1960s. Punched card systems employ a card (or cards) and a small clipboard-sized device for recording votes. Voters punch holes in the cards with a ballot marking device. Typical ballot marking devices carry a ballot label that identifies the candidates ...