Punched Cards

SHARE Symbolic

FORTRAN Statement

IBM 5081

IBM 5087

IBM 8 Word

IBM Pre-scored D10687

IBM Pre-scored D10688

IBM Incident Report 101

IBM Incident Report 029

IBM Incident Report 402

IBM Incident Reorder

Data Tab 733727

Kansas University

UC Berkeley

University of Waterloo

Waterloo WATFIV

JP36403-0 BSC

DDF-10683

DEAS-722

Drexel GP

Drexel Matric.

Seton Hall

Havorford AP

Havorford Payroll

Ukraine

Du-Co Ceramics

ISC 507536

Mountain Mark/Sense

Aperture Card

Lace Card

Card Registration Gauge

Gauge Instructions

Card Removal Tool

Punched cards. I spent a lot of time at the keypunch in the early 70s, entering FORTRAN programs. A sampling of card types is shown, along with an aluminum IBM Card Registration Guage and a 129 Card Removal Tool, better known as a card saw.

The Aperture Card has an attached strip of microfilm, which in this case is an engineering drawing of a Circuit Card Assembly for some sort of power supply.

The Lace Card is simply a card with all the holes punched. According to stories, it could be used to sabotage a user's job by covertly inserting it into his card deck. It would most likely jam the card reader.

The blue item is a card weight, and is used in a card reader or sorter to hold the cards down in the input hopper. The cylinder is the program drum from an 029 keypunch, and is used to hold the program card.

The two card decks are for the IBM 1401, and play music (Anchors Aweigh, and She'll Be Comin' 'Round the Mountain) on the 1403 line printer. See Ed Thelen's IBM 1401 restoration site for audio files of the 1403 playing music.

IBM 96 column card

IBM 96 column alignment gauge

This is a 96-column punched card from IBM, which was introduced with the System/3 in 1969. Information was punched in round (1mm) holes, in three rows of 32 columns each. Data could be punched as 6-bit BCD or 8-bit EBCDIC. A reader/punch was also available for the System/370 to handle the new cards. This card only measures 3-1/4"x2-5/8". IBM also made a keypunch for the 96-column cards, the model 5496 Data Recorder.

This is a plugboard or "control panel" from an IBM type 88 collator, circa 1959. The type 88 was a numeric-only collator, whose job it was to select or combine cards from two input decks into one of five output hoppers. The wires on the plugboard were used to program the selection process.

This is a larger plugboard from an IBM model 402 or 403 accounting machine. The 402 was introduced in 1948. According to the tag, it's wired for invoicing, with a date of June 6, 1963. This should be in the dictionary next to the definition of "spaghetti code".

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Last updated on Thursday, May 13, 2021