Computer History: Punch Cards Historical Overview -IBM Remington Rand UNIVAC - History 1900's-1960's

Your contribution greatly helps! Thank you! ~ CHAP. -- Computer History: A 10 minute look back at punch cards from the early 1900's up to the 1960's. Vintage films and photos of early IBM, Remington Rand and other keypunch, tabulating, calculating and computing machines. - Special thanks to IBM Archives, UNISYS Archives, US Government Archives and others, for vintage material. Compiled and edited by Computer History Archives Project. Narrated by David Melvin.

Explore our other Computer History videos:

[captainkeyboard]

At my first job in 1972, I became acquainted with the IBM 026 card punch machine and the IBM 024 card verifier at my first job "Metropolitan Life Insurance Company" that I entered in 1970, as a high school student. This show should be right up my alley. Keypunch was the next "best" thing I learned as a typist at my first job. When older people asked me about my occupation and I mention that I was a keypunch operator, they would ask if it had something to do with computers, then I would answer "yes, " and they would me a "computer wiz, " even when I have not seen a computer in my life. I was given a title favored by the right kind of people. My typewriting skill enabled me to learn keypunch by the firm with ease. It was a co-worker advised me that if I can type fast and accurately, I could learn any equipment that has a typewriter-like keyboard.

[James_Knott]

Way back in the dark ages, in my grade 12 FORTRAN class, we used pencil mark cards. These were the same dimensions as the IBM punch cards, but only supported 40 columns. IIRC, the same card could have both pencil marks and punched holes. A few years later, when I was a technician, I maintained & repaired punch card equipment.

[registromalplena]

In the late 1970s my mom had returned to college her student ID was essentially a photo ID that was also a small punch card. This was at the University Superior Wisconsin.

[IkanGelamaKuning]

I saw one in action, in "Our Man Flint" movie. The computer selected Flint as the best suitable Agent for the task, based from requirements set by members of Zowie.

[josephmazur]

I took a keypunch course in high school as an easy elective, using both 029 and 129 machines. Little did I know that my college COBOL class would use punched cards but only 029s. How useful it was to be able to duplicate a card up to an erroneous column then finish entering the correct data. And there was some utility program that would re-punch a new deck if you dropped the cards on the ground. COBOL sorted columns 1 - 6, JCL sorted 73-80. What useless information taking up space on the hard drive inside my head!

[telesniper]

My father worked for Defense Computational Resources Working Group, and dealt with writing programs on punchcards. He had developed an optical auto punch card system and had special cards printed up for it. Those cards would have little boxes over the punch area. So you'd must mark it just like those old scantron tests. Then you'd feed it into the keypunch machine and it would automatically detect the mark areas and punch them. This was in contrast to doing it manually on a keyboard like he said. Ok. Then he had a system of transparencies with commonly used snippets of code written out, and an overlay pattern to trace at the bottom of it. He'd put that on a glass table and put the punch card on top of it so he could mark down the spots that were blacked out underneath. So it was a primitive way of using programming libraries, heh. He said he got the idea from a story he heard about Bletchley park where they would use transparencies to help identify numerical patterns in codebreaking. Later on when xerography (that's photocopying) came out, he'd just put the transparencies into the photocopier and then trim down what it spit out and fed them into the optical-punch machine. There were some other cool innovations, such as optical tape for feeding the patterned program data that way. That was just a flim negative with the optical "punch" patterns exposed on it. That of course needed a highly modified reader, but he said the system worked well. The system used for "recording" the data onto the microfilm was real low frills he said, and consisted of a Minox camera. He said he managed to get about 2k info of information onto an exposure of 8x11mm film, a roll of which held 50 exposures (and was dirt cheap).

[mikeklaene]

The size of a standard punch card matched that of the US paper currency in the 1890s. That allowed the use of readily available holders and racks to facilitate things.
Where I went to HS in Northern KY in the early 60s we had punch card machines from Remington Rand supporting the two rows of 45 round holes giving 90 columns per card.
At the first place that I worked as a programmer there was a mix of IBM 026 and 029 keypunches in the key punch room. Most only had a numeric keypad and only about 10 were had the full alphanumeric keypads. In the computer room, there was only and IBM 016 keypunch - a true museum piece even then.
Fun times!

[Peter-etcb]

The 96-column punched card was missing from the IBM Systema 3 computer...

[johnthelander]

I handled hundreds of thousands punch cards during my time as a computer operator.

[chuckcornelius]

god, i'm old. my first three computer classes in college, we had to use punch cards, the 029 punch machine. the first day of class, they hand out one pink job card to everybody, which you have to protect with your life or you can't submit any jobs. fortunately i never dropped a card deck, but i've seen it happen.

[registromalplena]

According to the Wikipedia in 1974 there were still over 400 IBM 604s still in use!

[rty]

let's not forget MA BELL used to use 80 col cards for the phone bill too! I worked on IBM 360 machines and know that if you wet your finger and rub the center of each side of the card, you would cause the card to swell, and the gapper in the card reader would cause the reader to jam.The operator would have to remove the jam, then manually duplicate the card and insert it into the stack. such fun to cause MA Bell some processing issues.
you could also use special tape to cover the holes and repunch what you WANTED to pay, instead of what was originally on the card

[malibu]

Some university degree subjects required students to write punch card programs back in 1979. Confusing to many students who were already using electronic display terminals in other subjects at that time.

[Santor-]

In the 80"s imto the 90's, train tickets in Norway came as a punched card like this. Didnt realize the background of it then.

[NRCPOR]

8:50 "VolksWagon"? Since this is not a car channel, all is forgiven!
Love your vids!

[jvolstad]

I use to submit RPG II jobs via punched cards. Good times.

[ead]

oh heck they are in museums 😳. I used that kind in the 1960’s and into the 1970s. Oh heck I am old 🫢

[helenhanson]

I learned keypunch on an IBM 024 card punch.

[Pimp-Master]

I say technology can do any damn thing it wants as long as it eliminates the key punch operator job.

[ziiptjf]

But the question is, can it run Crysis? :D