History of Punch Cards
The use of punch cards for data processing played an important role in the early history of computers. It comes as a surprise that punch-card computer technology can be traced by to semi-automatic looms developed in France in the late 18th century.
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Early History
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In 1726, Jean-Baptiste Falcon used perforated paper cards to control the patterns woven by a loom. The device influenced the originator of the idea of a programmable computer, Charles Babbage, who proposed the use of punch cards to control the sequence of computations in the design for his analytical engine in 1837.
Development
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The Jacquard loom also influenced Herman Hollerith, who patented his version of the punch card in 1887. The Hollerith card was used with mechanical tabulating machines in the 1890 U.S. Census, and Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company, founded in 1896, merged with two other companies to form IBM in 1911.
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Design
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Widely known as IBM cards, punch cards consisted of a piece of light-weight cardboard with punched holes or intact areas in successive positions. Each punch location represented a single binary digit or "bit," and each column contained several punch positions, or multiple bits.
Use
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Punch cards were essential to early computing, from the 1920s through the 1950s. The cards were used for data entry, storage and processing. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, this crucial early computing technology was rendered obsolete by the new medium of magnetic storage.
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References
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Comments
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give me fully information about punched cards.
