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Punched Cards and Automated Data Processing

Definition

Punched cards encode information through the presence or absence of holes. They were widely used for automated tabulation, data input and early computer programming.

What is a punched card?

A punched card is a stiff paper card that stores information through holes placed at predefined positions. A machine reads the pattern of holes as data or instructions. Cards were used to control machinery, record data, sort records and feed programs into early computers.

From weaving to census processing

The Jacquard loom used punched cards to control textile patterns. In the late nineteenth century Herman Hollerith used punched-card machinery to speed processing of the 1890 U.S. census. Hollerith's work helped create the commercial data-processing industry that eventually became associated with IBM.

Punched cards in computing

During much of the twentieth century, programmers prepared decks of cards containing programs and data. A card reader converted those physical holes into machine-readable information. Cards were slow and cumbersome by modern standards, but they made one idea very concrete: a program could exist separately from the machine and be loaded as encoded information.

Related terms, defined

History & Foundations Alan Turing and the Universal Machine Turing's 1936 work defined an abstract computing machine and the concept of a universal machine capable of simulating other machines, becoming foundational to theoretical computer science. History & Foundations ENIAC and Electronic General-Purpose Computing ENIAC was an early large-scale electronic digital computer completed in the 1940s. It used vacuum tubes and helped demonstrate the practicality of electronic general-purpose computation. History & Foundations Stored-Program Computers and the Von Neumann Architecture Stored-program computing places instructions in memory so they can be fetched and executed rather than requiring a machine to be rewired for every task. History & Foundations Cybernetics and Feedback Systems Cybernetics studied control and communication in animals and machines, especially feedback loops in which systems sense state, compare it with a goal and adjust behavior. History & Foundations The Turing Test and the 1950 Question of Machine Intelligence In 1950 Alan Turing published “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” and proposed the imitation game as a behavioral way to discuss machine intelligence rather than trying to define the word “thinking” directly.

Reference guide and primary sources

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