Memorabilia: Punch Cards

[ornoth]

Recently, in my post about my new computer keyboard, I mentioned that punch cards were still in use when I was in college. Did you question that story? Well, lookee here!

Now, I didn’t say they were common. There was only one card punch and one card reader in the university computer center, and by the time I graduated, even these peripherals had been removed. You didn’t see them very often, but every so often you’d see an old card deck lying around, possibly abandoned.

That’s how I came across a box of cards labeled “Egypt Dictionary” and adopted it.

Why bother? For one thing, they were a disappearing rarity. But I’d also grown accustomed to using them for jotting down lists and notes, kind of like then-recently-invented Post-It notes, only free, a more usable size, and more robust thanks to being made from card stock. Although I gotta admit that blank cards would have been a lot more convenient than cards that already had holes punched in them!

And lest you think the University of Maine was some rustic relic still using peripherals that were backward-compatible with rocks, here’s a very stylish customized punch card that I procured while visiting the City University of New York’s Queens College computer center in 1985:

But while we’re discussing the computer equivalent of the Stone Age, here’s Page 218 from Pugh, Johnson, and Palmer’s 1991 book, “IBM’s 360 and Early 370 Systems” showing one of IBM’s early innovations for permanent storage: Mylar punch cards!!!

How, you might ask, did I know that image was on Page 218? Well, I found it quickly because I’d left a bookmark on that page in my copy. That bookmark was, in fact, an exceptionally appropriate use for one of my old punch cards!