[John Graham-Cumming] might not be the first person to thumb through an old book and find an IBM punched card inside. But he might be the first to actually track down the origin of the cards.

From the early 20th century into the 1970s, Americans used punched cards to enter data onto tabulating equipment and then electronic computers. This early key-operated punch is based on patents of the ...

(1) See loyalty punch card. (2) An early storage medium made of thin cardboard stock that held data as patterns of punched holes. Also called "punched" cards, each of the 80 or 96 columns held one ...