From the early 20th century into the 1970s, Americans used punched cards to enter data onto tabulating equipment and then electronic computers. This early key-operated punch is based on patents of the ...

We think of punched cards as old-fashioned, but still squarely part of the computer age. Turns out, cards were in use way before they got conscripted by computers. Jacquard looms are one famous ...

A punch-card data entry machine. A deck of blank cards was placed into a hopper, and, upon operator command, the machine fed one card to a punch station. As characters were typed, a series of dies at ...

On June 8, 1887, Herman Hollerith applied for US patent #395,781 for his punch card counting machine, a device considered to be among the foundations of the modern information processing industry and ...

The punch card, the first way to program a machine, turned 300 this year. The first semi-automatic loom was created in Lyon as early as 1725. To commemorate this, we have taken the liberty of updating ...