punch cards
Holed input sheets
Punch cards are stiff paper cards that store data as patterns of holes punched in specific positions.
Each hole (or its absence) represents a bit of information that machines can read.
They were the primary method of programming and data entry for computers from the 1950s through the 1970s: She fed the punch cards into the mainframe.
The format was unforgiving—a single mispunch meant retyping the entire card.
- keypunchDevice perforating data cards
- HollerithPunch card computing inventor
- mainframeLarge centralized computer system
- COBOLElderly business-oriented programming language
- chadPunched-out paper bits
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punch cardscloud storage
Online data preservation service
solid-state drives · cloud computing · flash memory · SSD · SSDs
punch cardsmagnetic storage
Data kept via magnetism
magnetic tape · hard disk drives · optical storage · optical discs · CDs
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