The Origins and History of Punch Cards

Having heard this explanation now you probably think that um punch cards were invented probably by ibm in the very earliest era of computers roundabout shall we say the late 40s or early 50s actually i think they were invented by ibm but a lot earlier than that and particularly somebody who was very much involved in the early days of computing and tabulating machinery a man called hermann horith.

If you look into the history of hollerith codes and hollerith punch cards you'll find that they were absolutely bound up with doing the united states census. If you're taking a census of your population every i think it's every 10 years in the uk probably the same in the us you rapidly find as your population gets into the tens or hundreds of millions even that you cannot do it all by hand you just have to be able to punch a card for every person or something of that sort and be able to have tabulating machines not actually computers but if you like simplified electromechanical sorting and collating machines that would pick up the holes in a punch card and enable simple numerical processing to be done but very much in an electromechanical kind of way.

Those of you with slightly longer memories or slightly older may well remember that i think up until about two elections ago in the us there was a grave distrust of having purely electronic voting machines. You wanted to have the fact that if you registered your vote it was done on punch cards and i think it was the era of the presidential election which al gore narrowly lost in florida to george bush where all this came to light that was part of florida's polling system. Yeah, you had punch card machines you punched a card you know a card was punched to say who you were card was punch to say what your vote was but when things went wrong and the counting showed that it was a result too close to call i certainly remember on the newsreels people holding up cards very similar to this but not using this code and talking about the fact that perhaps one or two of these holes have not been punched correctly.

If you have a worn card punch you can get two possibilities you can get one of these windows is ever so slightly closed because the little piece of card at the back which is technically known as a chad had not become properly detached so did that count as a punched hole or not. Because if it didn't then maybe this is an al gore vote or if the hole was punched out maybe it was a george bush vote and even worse i think than the hanging chads were the dimpled chads once again if you get a machine that's not been very well maintained and doesn't hammer its way through this card you can have situations here where you don't get a clean hole you just get an indentation in the cardboard and it's not a proper punched hole at all. So i do remember the newsroom has been full of analysis of hanging chads and dimpled chads and this would go to the supreme court i think it did.

I think that the judges in the supreme court ended up looking at these things and pontificating about hanging chad's dimple chads and who would really win card technology then was not invented initially with computers in mind although it was very readily adapted for them. It was invented simply and solely to cope with doing the united states census do you know and it doesn't matter if you don't do you know what a computer would do with a hanging chat now that's interesting.

What would a computer do with a hanging chad? I rather suspect that the just the mechanism of putting these cards through a card reader, card readers were amazingly fast. I think if there was a hanging chad it would tend that the compressed air as a lot of compressed air used in these machines to move the cars through very quickly and as they move through the reader station then photoelectric cells actually would nowadays have read those holes. I think if the chat was hanging in the breeze it probably would have registered as not a hole it just depends how hanging it was and certainly a dimpled chad photoelectrically would not have registered as being a hole so yeah it all depends whether these things are being read mechanically with little rods going through that might have punched the chat out or whether they were being read photoelectrically. I just don't know

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhaving heard this explanation now you probably think that um punch cards were invented probably by ibm in the very earliest era of computers roundabout shall we say the late 40s or early 50s actually i think they were invented by ibm but a lot earlier than that and particularly somebody who was very much involved in the early days of computing and tabulating machinery a man called hermann horith and if you look into the history of hollerith codes and hollerith punch cards you'll find that they were absolutely bound up with doing the united states census if you're taking a census of your population every i think it's every 10 years in the uk probably the same in the us you rapidly find as your population gets into the tens or hundreds of millions even that you cannot do it all by hand you just have to be able to punch a card for every person or something of that sort and be able to have tabulating machines not actually computers but if you like simplified electromechanical sorting and collating machines that would pick up the holes in a punch card and enable simple numerical processing to be done but very much in an electromechanical kind of way and those of you with slightly longer memories or slightly older may well remember that i think up until about two elections ago in the us there was a grave distrust of having purely electronic voting machines you wanted to have the fact that if you registered your vote it was done on punch cards and i think it was the era of the presidential election which al gore narrowly lost in florida to george bush where all this came to light that was part of florida's polling system yeah you had punch card machines you punched a card you know a card was punched to say who you were card was punch to say what your vote was but when things went wrong and the counting showed that it was a result too close to call i certainly remember on the newsreels people holding up cards very similar to this but not using this code and talking about the fact that perhaps one or two of these holes have not been punched correctly if you have a worn card punch you can get two possibilities you can get one of these windows is ever so slightly closed because the little piece of card at the back which is technically known as a chad had not become properly detached so did that count as a punched hole or not because if it didn't then maybe this is an al gore vote or if the hole was punched out maybe it was a george bush vote and even worse i think than the hanging chads were the dimpled chads once again if you get a machine that's not been very well maintained and doesn't hammer its way through this card you can have situations here where you don't get a clean hole you just get an indentation in the cardboard and it's not a proper punched hole at all so i do remember the newsroom has been full of analysis of hanging chads and dimpled chads and this would go to the supreme court i think it did i think that the judges in the supreme court ended up looking at these things and pontificating about hanging chad's dimple chads and who would really won card technology then was not invented initially with computers in mind although it was very readily adapted for them it was invented simply and solely to cope with doing the united states census do you know and it doesn't matter if you don't do you know what a computer would do with a hanging chat now that's interesting what would a computer do with a hanging chad i rather suspect that the just the mechanism of putting these cards through a card reader card readers were amazingly fast i think if there was a hanging chad it would tend that the compressed air as a lot of compressed air used in these machines to move the cars through very quickly and as they move through the reader station then photoelectric cells actually would nowadays have read those holes i think if the chat was hanging in the breeze it probably would have registered as not a hole it just depends how hanging it was and certainly a dimpled chad photoelectrically would not have registered as being a hole so yeah it all depends whether these things are being read mechanically with little rods going through that might have punched the chat out or whether they were being read photoelectrically i just don't knowhaving heard this explanation now you probably think that um punch cards were invented probably by ibm in the very earliest era of computers roundabout shall we say the late 40s or early 50s actually i think they were invented by ibm but a lot earlier than that and particularly somebody who was very much involved in the early days of computing and tabulating machinery a man called hermann horith and if you look into the history of hollerith codes and hollerith punch cards you'll find that they were absolutely bound up with doing the united states census if you're taking a census of your population every i think it's every 10 years in the uk probably the same in the us you rapidly find as your population gets into the tens or hundreds of millions even that you cannot do it all by hand you just have to be able to punch a card for every person or something of that sort and be able to have tabulating machines not actually computers but if you like simplified electromechanical sorting and collating machines that would pick up the holes in a punch card and enable simple numerical processing to be done but very much in an electromechanical kind of way and those of you with slightly longer memories or slightly older may well remember that i think up until about two elections ago in the us there was a grave distrust of having purely electronic voting machines you wanted to have the fact that if you registered your vote it was done on punch cards and i think it was the era of the presidential election which al gore narrowly lost in florida to george bush where all this came to light that was part of florida's polling system yeah you had punch card machines you punched a card you know a card was punched to say who you were card was punch to say what your vote was but when things went wrong and the counting showed that it was a result too close to call i certainly remember on the newsreels people holding up cards very similar to this but not using this code and talking about the fact that perhaps one or two of these holes have not been punched correctly if you have a worn card punch you can get two possibilities you can get one of these windows is ever so slightly closed because the little piece of card at the back which is technically known as a chad had not become properly detached so did that count as a punched hole or not because if it didn't then maybe this is an al gore vote or if the hole was punched out maybe it was a george bush vote and even worse i think than the hanging chads were the dimpled chads once again if you get a machine that's not been very well maintained and doesn't hammer its way through this card you can have situations here where you don't get a clean hole you just get an indentation in the cardboard and it's not a proper punched hole at all so i do remember the newsroom has been full of analysis of hanging chads and dimpled chads and this would go to the supreme court i think it did i think that the judges in the supreme court ended up looking at these things and pontificating about hanging chad's dimple chads and who would really won card technology then was not invented initially with computers in mind although it was very readily adapted for them it was invented simply and solely to cope with doing the united states census do you know and it doesn't matter if you don't do you know what a computer would do with a hanging chat now that's interesting what would a computer do with a hanging chad i rather suspect that the just the mechanism of putting these cards through a card reader card readers were amazingly fast i think if there was a hanging chad it would tend that the compressed air as a lot of compressed air used in these machines to move the cars through very quickly and as they move through the reader station then photoelectric cells actually would nowadays have read those holes i think if the chat was hanging in the breeze it probably would have registered as not a hole it just depends how hanging it was and certainly a dimpled chad photoelectrically would not have registered as being a hole so yeah it all depends whether these things are being read mechanically with little rods going through that might have punched the chat out or whether they were being read photoelectrically i just don't know\n"