Hi Brian and Rachael,
Thanks for the information. Wow, I didn't realize that a storage medium such
as the punch card could exist for this many years. Imagine having to use
similar devices for storing information on our BrailleNotes--but I guess we
wouldn't have those either if that were the case. This is just one of the
many examples of why I become more and more thankful every day that I am
growing up in this present time period!
Lindsay
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Lingard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Braillenote List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2006 9:23 PM
Subject: [Braillenote] Punched Cards
Ottawa Canada
A punched card was a piece of light cardboard about the size of a
government cheque that had 12 rows and 80 columns Data was
recorded on the card by punching holes in it. Numbers were a
single punch in a given column while letters, punctuation and
special characters required two or more punches in a given
column..
They used to send one with various bills, like your telephone
bill, some utility bills with your account number and amount
owing already punched into the card and would punch the amount of
your payment into it when you sent it in with your cheque.
Then they fed the cards to either what were called unit record
(another name for a punched card) tabulating machines or into a
card reader connected to a computer and credit your payment to
your account.
Punched cards were the most common form of data processing medium
for years, like from about 1890 until maybe 20 years ago.
They were invented by Herman Hollerith, the Chief of the U.S.
Bureau Of The Census to speed the processing of census data.
Back then they didn't have computers in 1890, but they invented
mechanical punched card processing machines to sort, list, add up
and do other operations that are very tedious to do manually when
you are dealing with millions of pieces of data.
A punched card is also known as an IBM card because IBM was a
major manufacturer of punched card equipment.
Hope this explains what a punched card is.
Brian
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