A punch-card data entry machine. A deck of blank cards was placed into a hopper, and, upon operator command, the machine fed one card to a punch station. As characters were typed, a series of dies ...

Also called "punched" cards, each of the 80 or 96 columns held one character. The holes were punched by a human operator at a keypunch machine or on a stand-alone card reproducer. Punch cards were ...