Punch cards were invented by Herman Hollerith and used in tabulating machines for recording vital statistics. IBM later patented the 80-column card, limiting competitors. Despite being replaced by magnetic tape in the 1970s, punch cards are still used in some voting machines.
The first mainframe computer programs were contained in stacks of cardboard punch cards. Although it has been many years since they have been used for this purpose, punch cards still have few uses and are particularly used in some voting machines.
Punch cards were actually invented before electronic computers. Originally patented by Herman Hollerith, the punched card was first used with tabulating machines to record vital statistics by the New York City Board of Health, and later, in the 1890 census. Hollerith actually got the idea from the cards used in the looms Jacquard, which use cards to control a weave pattern.
Hollerith invented electromechanical machines including a punching device, a tabulating machine and a sorter, which could be used to accumulate and store statistics. His company, the Tabulating Machine Company, was later joined by Thomas Watson, who later renamed the company International Business Machines (IBM).
The size and number of columns has varied over the years, with the original card used in the 1890 census having 20 columns with 10 punch marks each. There are some interesting parallels with modern operating systems. In 1928, IBM introduced and patented the 80-column card that used rectangular holes rather than round holes, which was significant because it limited IBM’s competitors to the older, incompatible round-hole format.
Remington Rand designed a competing format that allowed 90 columns of text to be stored on 45 column cards, which was actually a superior design, but due to IBM’s market dominance, they weren’t used as often. Processing the cards didn’t necessarily require the use of a computer. Some retail applications, for example, used a card sorter and tabulating machine for accounting functions, such as adding up price fields on cards across multiple categories.
Programming languages required early fixed-format cards to switch to a free-form design, and with the development of standardized computer languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL, generic punched cards became prevalent.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that large data processing operations began to transition from punch cards to time-sharing environments with data stored on magnetic tape.
Punched cards are still widely used in voting machines, despite the problems that have occurred over the years. In the 1968 general election in Detroit, a rainstorm drenched a number of ballots, and questions arose in the 2000 presidential election about their accuracy and efficiency compared to more modern systems.
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