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punched card

File:2punchCards-square.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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punched card

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Also known as punch card, punchcard, Hollerith card, IBM card, tab card

paper-based recording medium

AI overview

A punched card is a piece of stiff paper with holes punched in specific patterns to record and store information, which machines could read and process. These cards were widely used in the early computing era to input data and instructions into computers before modern keyboards and digital storage became available.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Research

1,350 papers

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Encyclopedic overview

A set of two 12-row/80-column punched cards (one blank, one used) from the mid-twentieth century

A punched card (also punch card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 19th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widely used for data processing, the control of automated machines, and computing. Early applications included controlling weaving looms and recording census data.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “punched card” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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