History Of The Punch Card

[Wombat]

When I was learning Fortran programming in the 1960s, we marked a paper version of a card/s and sent it out to get a card/s punched. Each time we made an error in code or marking-up the form this process was repeated, and frowned at by tutors. I learned to diligently check tedious detail.

The Card

 

[PaulD]

Does that link go to the right place?

 

[Wombat]

Does that link go to the right place?

Fixed. Time for coffee.

 

[Hugo9000]

Long before that, punch cards were used for Jacquard looms...

 

[typericey]

- You just gave away your age range.

- I work for IBM and I'm familiar with our company history, including Fortran and punch cards.

- The Playstation video game Dishonored is set on an alternate dystopian past where they used audiographs: audio players/recorders with punch cards as the recording medium. I'm trying to wrap my head on its technical possibility.

 

[Wombat]

A wider view which includes machine control as well as data processing:

https://whatis.techtarget.com/reference/History-of-the-punch-card

The Music Roll is similar but different.

 

[pozz]

I learned to diligently check tedious detail.

Does that link go to the right place?

Couldn't resist

 

[pozz]

A wider view which includes machine control as well as data processing:

https://whatis.techtarget.com/reference/History-of-the-punch-card

The Music Roll is similar but different.

One of my favourite musicians wrote his master's thesis comparing piano rolls to DAWs.

 

[DonH56]

Wonder how many remember EBCDIC... When I started college everything was punch cards. I have the usual stories of scrambled card decks, the one character out of place on one card in the 100-card program, and all that jazz... In my last year or two they bought a couple of big Amdahl's to help the IBM mainframe, switched to VM, and put terminals everywhere. After a couple of hellacious years they finally got everything running, and life became much easier for students, though of course there were never enough terminals. I was TA for some classes as well as working in the EE lab so had access before that via an old DEC PDP -8, then 11/70, yippee!), and was also pre-med so was able to use the "white campus" terminals that were hardly ever used (red = engineering/physics, white = biology/chem/liberal arts, from the red or white bricks that made up the buildings).

 

[PaulD]

One of my favourite musicians wrote his master's thesis comparing piano rolls to DAWs.

The old RCA Mk II Sound Synthesiser (installed at Columbia Uni) used 2 punched paper rolls to control its programmable parts, in 1957, a lot later than the Hollerith machines. Pic below

 

[amirm]

I was fortunately enough to get into compute while punch cards were on decline and multi-user terminals and PCs had arrived. But I made a big mistake taking a job from dean of the college to punch in hundreds of cards for a statistical analysis he was doing. The only punch card machine was in the basement of the university, in a cold, dark hallway. I remember wanting to bash the machine every time I made a mistake and had to start over.

Worst part was then chasing him to get paid!

Now here I sit in front of a 4K monitor to work. We have come so far....

 

[PaulD]

I never worked with punched cards, but my much older brother did and I saw them. Many years ago I worked on a project where we reconstructed some computer programs from punched-paper tape, that was fun and instructive. The programs were in octal, and before we had a machine reader rebuilt, another person and myself hand read the code, typing it into ascii files in octal, then compared our results to find the errors - it worked fine! The project is here: https://theconversation.com/how-australia-played-the-worlds-first-music-on-a-computer-60381 although there's no pic of the punched-paper tapes...

 

[Wombat]

Couldn't resist

No senior moments back then.

I did conclude that digital programming was not for me but loved analogue control-system computing which later, hobby-wise, gave me an good insight into the work of Thiele and Small.

 

[Johnb]

I took a Basic language course as an AP course in my senior year in high school at the local junior college. Back then computer time was expensive - it was almost always an overnight wait to get results. And as everyone has said, all that wait to be sunk by a typo. This is absolutely the worst way to learn anything - you only learn when your mistakes are fresh in mind. The feedback needs to be close to immediate. In that era, the best programming text I saw introduced a single concept on a page, gave a reinforcing problem to solve, and answered on the next page. It compensated for the stupid punch cards.

Delay in processing film was also the reason that I never became particularly good in photography.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Got to work part time in a university physics lab while in high school. They had a PDP-8 I could use. Taught myself some of the basics with it. Interacted via paper tape programming. Well initially I entered programs using the keys on the front. Knew hexadecimal like the decimal system.

Then they let me use paper tape.

Took a keypunch class as I left high school. 13,000 strokes per hour. Lots of jobs for keypunch operators. Lousy job, lousy pay, but you didn't go hungry. At university they had a PDP-11 and Xerox Sigma 7. Did lots of punched card programs for the Sigma 7. Yuck. They were just introducing time-shared access to the Sigma 7 with teletype consoles on paper and later with amber CRTs and keyboards. We didn't have to wait. As an engineering student I could sign in and run my own punch cards. Hated when it halted on an error. Dammit! Liked Fortran, but hated COBOL. Was offered a job once, but found out they were using COBOL. I told them they'd have to look for someone else.

Off topic, but I kept a Commodore 64 and 128 around just to run some Fortran for a time as it was easy and convenient. I remember Abacus software used to make COBOL for the Commodore 64. Double Yuck! Oh, and you had the chance to store programs on cassette tape (and later floppy disc).

 

[Hipper]

I used punch cards here in the UK in the early 1970s. I worked for British Rail and they bought an American programme called TOPS (Total Operations Processing System) which was a computer software designed for individual wagon control. Each wagon would have a descriptive code (e.g. VVV was van, CAB was brake van - caboose in the U.S.!) and real world number. The computer could tell us wear and in what condition a wagon was (e.g. on a specific train, containing fish). All this was on a punch card.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPS

A very interesting book relating to punch cards is IBM and the Holocaust.

 

[Wombat]

The Time Clock obviates trust

 

[Blumlein 88]

The Time Clock obviates trust

Funny you post this. The first full time job I had used a card punched time clock. Increments of 6 minutes (tenth of an hour). If you didn't get punched in on time you didn't get paid. There were 45-50 people using one clock. I clocked in a bit early every day because sometimes though there you couldn't get into the 6 minute window. I did immediately start my duties. Clocking out I sometimes was a tenth late as I was never going to clock out early.

After a few weeks, I was summoned by the accountant/payroll person. Dressed down for being sneaky about getting a little extra pay. I explained I simply intended never to be late, and they didn't have to pay me extra just pay me my 40 hrs. Oh, she just exploded about how the clock was the record and she couldn't not pay me. I didn't really know what to do. The oldest guy there, an employee since that company's first day, overheard her. He was my boss. He came in, and told her, "shut the F*** up. He is just trying to do a good job and penny pinchers like you will kill this company."
Later, she had a fit because I was using too many pens. My job required lots of writing. I was using TWO PENS PER MONTH. These were literally the 19 cent BIC pens. The same guy, after learning she told me to get by on one pen per month or bring my own wasn't happy with her. He went, took all the boxes of pens from her, and gave them to me to put in a lock box. Then told her when she or anyone in her office needed pens, to check them out from me. I didn't really want to be in on this. But for several months I was. The entire accounting department had to check out pens from me, the lowest paid employee with less than one year on the job.

My boss retired a year later. I had moved on by then. The MBA/accountant/payroll person then managed the company into bankruptcy 3 years after that.

So yes, time clocks can reduce trust I think.

 

[Wombat]

Student summer factory job. I remember for being a minute late the penalty was 15 minutes pay. No excuses. That experience reinforced my desire for higher education. I remember the clock access queue jostling.

 

[Neddy]

Classic bean counter story - good example of little hitler syndrome driving a company to dust. Pen Control Supervisor? Really.
Re: time cards - things haven't changed that much (I did the 6 min early in/out thing too, but that was before the 'puterized it all.)
A good friend of mine is currently being harassed over arrival departure times (after medical leave) as her sup is monitoring her live and from DVR from ALL the security cameras on site...even to dinging her for taking too much time between entry into secure parking vs. building entry. (This for a salaried position.) LH's exist at all levels, in all industries....and I have to wonder if data centers, with their hyper security and lack of outside oversight are just the latest opportunity for abuses like that.
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