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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Those old enough to have encountered punch cards in their lifetime are probably glad to be rid of their extremely low data density and the propensity of tall stacks to tip over. But obsolete as they ...