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Punched Card ○꠹｜Definition｜1st｜20261023172208-00-⌔
Punched card
A punched card (also punch card1) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 19th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widely used for data processing, the control of automated machines, and computing. Early applications included controlling weaving looms and recording census data.
Punched cards were widely used in the 20th century, where unit record machines, organized into data processing systems, used punched cards for data input, data output, and data storage.23 The IBM 12-row/80-column punched card format came to dominate the industry. Many early digital computers used punched cards as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data. Punched cards were used for decades before being replaced by magnetic-tape data storage.
Punched cards had a significant cultural impact in the 20th century. Their legacy persists in modern computing, influencing the 80-character line standard still present in some command-line interfaces and programming environments.
Printed 2026-10-23.
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Link to original Footnotes
Pinker, Steven Arthur (2007). The Stuff of Thought. Viking. p. 362. (NB. Notes the loss of -ed in pronunciation as it did in ice cream, mincemeat, and box set, formerly iced cream, minced meat, and boxed set.) ↩
Cortada, James W. [at Wikidata] (1993). Before The Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, & Remington Rand & The Industry They Created, 1865–1965. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-63008-3. ↩
Brooks, Frederick Phillips; Iverson, Kenneth Eugene (1963). Automatic Data Processing. Wiley. p. 94. semiautomatic ↩