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6,501	Perforated paper tapes were first used by Basile Bouchon in 1725 to control looms. However, the paper tapes were expensive to create, fragile, and difficult to repair. By 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard had developed machines to create paper tapes by tying punched cards in a sequence for Jacquard looms. The resulting paper tape, also called a "chain of cards", was stronger and simpler both to create and to repair. This led to the concept of communicating data not as a stream of individual cards, but as one "continuous card" . Paper tapes constructed from punched cards were widely used throughout the 19th century for controlling looms. Many professional embroidery operations still refer to those individuals who create the designs and machine patterns as punchers even though punched cards and paper tape were eventually phased out in the 1990s.
6,502	In 1842, a French patent by Claude Seytre described a piano playing device that read data from perforated paper rolls. By 1900, wide perforated music rolls for player pianos were used to distribute popular music to mass markets.
6,503	In 1846, Alexander Bain used punched tape to send telegrams. This technology was adopted by Charles Wheatstone in 1857 for the Wheatstone system used for the automated preparation, storage and transmission of data in telegraphy.
6,504	In the 1880s, Tolbert Lanston invented the Monotype typesetting system, which consisted of a keyboard and a composition caster. The tape, punched with the keyboard, was later read by the caster, which produced lead type according to the combinations of holes in up to 31 positions. The tape reader used compressed air, which passed through the holes and was directed into certain mechanisms of the caster. The system went into commercial use in 1897 and was in production well into the 1970s, undergoing several changes along the way.
6,505	In the 21st century, punched tape is obsolete except among hobbyists. In computer numerical control machining applications, though paper tape has been superseded by digital memory, some modern systems still measure the size of stored CNC programs in feet or meters, corresponding to the equivalent length if the data were actually punched on paper tape.
6,506	Data was represented by the presence or absence of a hole at a particular location. Tapes originally had five rows of holes for data across the width of the tape. Later tapes had more rows. A 1944 electro-mechanical programmable calculating machine, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator or Harvard Mark I, used paper tape with 24 rows. Australia's 1951 electronic computer, CSIRAC, used 3-inch wide paper tape with twelve rows.
6,507	A row of smaller sprocket holes was always punched to be used to synchronize tape movement. Originally, this was done using a wheel with radial teeth called a sprocket wheel. Later, optical readers made use of the sprocket holes to generate timing pulses. The sprocket holes were slightly closer to one edge of the tape, dividing the tape into unequal widths, to make it unambiguous which way to orient the tape in the reader. The bits on the narrower width of the tape were generally the least significant bits when the code was represented as numbers in a digital system.
6,508	Many early machines used oiled paper tape, which was pre-impregnated with a light machine oil, to lubricate the reader and punch mechanisms. The oil impregnation usually made the paper somewhat translucent and slippery, and excess oil could transfer to clothing or any surfaces it contacted. Later optical tape readers often specified non-oiled opaque paper tape, which was less prone to depositing oily debris on the optical sensors and causing read errors. Another innovation was fanfold paper tape, which was easier to store compactly and less prone to tangling, as compared to rolled paper tape.
6,509	For heavy-duty or repetitive use, polyester Mylar tape was often used. This tough, durable plastic film was usually thinner than paper tapes, but could still be used in many devices originally designed for paper media. The plastic tape was sometimes transparent, but usually was aluminized to make it opaque enough for use in high-speed optical readers.
6,510	Tape for punching was usually 0.00394 inches thick. The two most common widths were 11⁄16 inch for five bit codes, and 1 inch for tapes with six or more bits. Hole spacing was 0.1 inches in both directions. Data holes were 0.072 inches in diameter; sprocket feed holes were 0.046 inches .
6,511	Most tape-punching equipment used solid circular punches to create holes in the tape. This process created "chad", or small circular pieces of paper. Managing the disposal of chad was an annoying and complex problem, as the tiny paper pieces had a tendency to escape containment and to interfere with the other electromechanical parts of the teleprinter equipment. Chad from oiled paper tape was particularly problematic, as it tended to clump and build up, rather than flowing freely into a collection container.
6,512	A variation on the tape punch was a device called a Chadless Printing Reperforator. This machine would punch a received teleprinter signal into tape and print the message on it at the same time, using a printing mechanism similar to that of an ordinary page printer. The tape punch, rather than punching out the usual round holes, would instead punch little U-shaped cuts in the paper, so that no chad would be produced; the "hole" was still filled with a little paper trap-door. By not fully punching out the hole, the printing on the paper remained intact and legible. This enabled operators to read the tape without having to decipher the holes, which would facilitate relaying the message on to another station in the network. Also, there was no "chad box" to empty from time to time.
6,513	A disadvantage to this technology was that, once punched, chadless tape did not roll up well for storage, because the protruding flaps of paper would catch on the next layer of tape so it could not be coiled up tightly. Another disadvantage that emerged in time, was that there was no reliable way to read chadless tape in later high-speed readers which used optical sensing. However, the mechanical tape readers used in most standard-speed equipment had no problem with chadless tape, because they sensed the holes by means of blunt spring-loaded mechanical sensing pins, which easily pushed the paper flaps out of the way.
6,514	Text was encoded in several ways. The earliest standard character encoding was Baudot, which dates back to the 19th century and had five holes. The Baudot code was superseded by modified five-hole codes such as the Murray code which was developed into the Western Union code which was further developed into the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 , and a variant called the American Teletypewriter code . Other standards, such as Teletypesetter , FIELDATA and Flexowriter, had six holes. In the early 1960s, the American Standards Association led a project to develop a universal code for data processing, which became the American Standard Code for Information Interchange . This seven-level code was adopted by some teleprinter users, including AT&T . Others, such as Telex, stayed with the earlier codes.
6,515	Punched tape was used as a way of storing messages for teletypewriters. Operators typed in the message to the paper tape, and then sent the message at the maximum line speed from the tape. This permitted the operator to prepare the message "off-line" at the operator's best typing speed, and permitted the operator to correct any error prior to transmission. An experienced operator could prepare a message at 135 words per minute or more for short periods.
6,516	The line typically operated at 75 WPM, but it operated continuously. By preparing the tape "off-line" and then sending the message with a tape reader, the line could operate continuously rather than depending on continuous "on-line" typing by a single operator. Typically, a single 75 WPM line supported three or more teletype operators working offline. Tapes punched at the receiving end could be used to relay messages to another station. Large store and forward networks were developed using these techniques.
6,517	Paper tape could be read into computers at up to 1,000 characters per second. In 1963, a Danish company called Regnecentralen introduced a paper tape reader called RC 2000 that could read 2,000 characters per second; later they increased the speed further, up to 2,500 cps. As early as World War II, the Heath Robinson tape reader, used by Allied codebreakers, was capable of 2,000 cps while Colossus could run at 5,000 cps using an optical tape reader designed by Arnold Lynch.
6,518	When the first minicomputers were being released, most manufacturers turned to the existing mass-produced ASCII teleprinters as a low-cost solution for keyboard input and printer output. The commonly specified Model 33 ASR included a paper tape punch/reader, where ASR stands for "Automatic Send/Receive" as opposed to the punchless/readerless KSR – Keyboard Send/Receive and RO – Receive Only models. As a side effect, punched tape became a popular medium for low-cost minicomputer data and program storage, and it was common to find a selection of tapes containing useful programs in most minicomputer installations. Faster optical readers were also common.
6,519	Binary data transfer to or from these minicomputers was often accomplished using a doubly encoded technique to compensate for the relatively high error rate of punches and readers. The low-level encoding was typically ASCII, further encoded and framed in various schemes such as Intel Hex, in which a binary value of "01011010" would be represented by the ASCII characters "5A". Framing, addressing and checksum information helped with error detection. Efficiencies of such an encoding scheme are on the order of 35–40% .
6,520	In the 1970s, computer-aided manufacturing equipment often used paper tape. A paper tape reader was smaller and less expensive than Hollerith card or magnetic tape readers, and the medium was reasonably reliable in a manufacturing environment. Paper tape was an important storage medium for computer-controlled wire-wrap machines, for example.
6,521	Premium black waxed and lubricated long-fiber papers, and Mylar film tape were developed so that heavily used production tapes would last longer.
6,522	In the 1970s through the early 1980s, paper tape was commonly used to transfer binary data for incorporation in either mask-programmable read-only memory chips or their erasable counterparts EPROMs. A significant variety of encoding formats were developed for use in computer and ROM/EPROM data transfer. Encoding formats commonly used were primarily driven by those formats that EPROM programming devices supported and included various ASCII hex variants as well as a number of proprietary formats.
6,523	A much more primitive as well as a much longer high-level encoding scheme was also used, BNPF , also written as BPNF . In BNPF encoding, a single byte would be represented by a highly redundant character framing sequence starting with a single uppercase ASCII "B", eight ASCII characters where a "0" would be represented by a "N" and a "1" would be represented by a "P", followed by an ending ASCII "F". These ten-character ASCII sequences were separated by one or more whitespace characters, therefore using at least eleven ASCII characters for each byte stored . The ASCII "N" and "P" characters differed in four bit positions, providing excellent protection from single punch errors. Alternative schemes named BHLF and B10F were also available where either "L" and "H" or "0" and "1" were also available to represent data bits, but in both of these encoding schemes, the two data-bearing ASCII characters differ in only one bit position, providing very poor single punch error detection.
6,524	NCR of Dayton, Ohio, made cash registers around 1970 that would punch paper tape. Sweda made similar cash registers around the same time. The tape could then be read into a computer and not only could sales information be summarized, billings could be done on charge transactions. The tape was also used for inventory tracking, recording department and class numbers of items sold.
6,525	Punched paper tape was used by the newspaper industry until the mid-1970s or later. Newspapers were typically set in hot lead by devices like Linotype machines. With the wire services coming into a device that would punch paper tape, rather than the Linotype operator having to retype all the incoming stories, the paper tape could be put into a paper tape reader on the Linotype and it would create the lead slugs without the operator re-typing the stories. This also allowed newspapers to use devices, such as the Friden Flexowriter, to convert typing to lead type via tape. Even after the demise of Linotype and hot lead typesetting, many early phototypesetter devices utilized paper tape readers.
6,526	If an error was found at one position on the six-level tape, that character could be turned into a null character to be skipped by punching out the remaining non-punched positions with what was known as a “chicken plucker". It looked like a strawberry stem remover that, pressed with thumb and forefinger, could punch out the remaining positions, one hole at a time.
6,527	Vernam ciphers were invented in 1917 to encrypt teleprinter communications using a key stored on paper tape. During the last third of the 20th century, the National Security Agency used punched paper tape to distribute cryptographic keys. The eight-level paper tapes were distributed under strict accounting controls and read by a fill device, such as the hand held KOI-18, that was temporarily connected to each security device that needed new keys. NSA has been trying to replace this method with a more secure electronic key management system , but as of 2016, paper tape was apparently still being employed. The paper tape canister is a tamper-resistant container that contains features to prevent undetected alteration of the contents.
6,528	Acid-free paper or Mylar tapes can be read many decades after manufacture, in contrast with magnetic tape that can deteriorate and become unreadable with time. The hole patterns of punched tape can be decoded by eye if necessary, and even editing of a tape is possible by manual cutting and splicing. Unlike magnetic tape, magnetic fields such as produced by electric motors cannot alter the punched data. In cryptography applications, a punched tape used to distribute a key can be rapidly and completely destroyed by burning, preventing the key from falling into the hands of an enemy.
6,529	Reliability of paper tape punching operations was a concern, so that for critical applications a new punched tape could be read after punching to verify the correct contents. Rewinding a tape required a takeup reel or other measures to avoid tearing or tangling the tape. In some uses, "fan fold" tape simplified handling as the tape would refold into a "takeup tank" ready to be re-read. The information density of punched tape was low compared with magnetic tape, making large datasets clumsy to handle in punched tape form.
6,530	A punched card is a piece of card stock that stores digital data using punched holes. Punched cards were once common in data processing and the control of automated machines.
6,531	Punched cards were widely used in the 20th century, where unit record machines, organized into data processing systems, used punched cards for data input, output, and storage. The IBM 12-row/80-column punched card format came to dominate the industry. Many early digital computers used punched cards as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data.
6,532	Data can be entered onto a punched card using a keypunch.
6,533	While punched cards are now obsolete as a storage medium, as of 2012, some voting machines still used punched cards to record votes. Punched cards also had a significant cultural impact in the 20th century.
6,534	The idea of control and data storage via punched holes was developed independently on several occasions in the modern period. In most cases there is no evidence that each of the inventors was aware of the earlier work.
6,535	Basile Bouchon developed the control of a loom by punched holes in paper tape in 1725. The design was improved by his assistant Jean-Baptiste Falcon and by Jacques Vaucanson. Although these improvements controlled the patterns woven, they still required an assistant to operate the mechanism.
6,536	In 1804 Joseph Marie Jacquard demonstrated a mechanism to automate loom operation. A number of punched cards were linked into a chain of any length. Each card held the instructions for shedding and selecting the shuttle for a single pass.
6,537	Semyon Korsakov was reputedly the first to propose punched cards in informatics for information store and search. Korsakov announced his new method and machines in September 1832.
6,538	Charles Babbage proposed the use of "Number Cards", "pierced with certain holes and stand opposite levers connected with a set of figure wheels ... advanced they push in those levers opposite to which there are no holes on the cards and thus transfer that number together with its sign" in his description of the Calculating Engine's Store. There is no evidence that he built a practical example.
6,539	In 1881 Jules Carpentier developed a method of recording and playing back performances on a harmonium using punched cards. The system was called the Mélographe Répétiteur and "writes down ordinary music played on the keyboard dans le langage de Jacquard", that is as holes punched in a series of cards. By 1887 Carpentier had separated the mechanism into the Melograph which recorded the player's key presses and the Melotrope which played the music.
6,540	At the end of the 1800s Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a medium that could then be read by a machine, developing punched card data processing technology for the 1890 U.S. census. His tabulating machines read and summarized data stored on punched cards and they began use for government and commercial data processing.
6,541	Initially, these electromechanical machines only counted holes, but by the 1920s they had units for carrying out basic arithmetic operations.: 124 Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company which was one of four companies that were amalgamated via stock acquisition to form a fifth company, Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in 1911, later renamed International Business Machines Corporation in 1924. Other companies entering the punched card business included The Tabulator Limited , Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft mbH , Powers Accounting Machine Company , Remington Rand , and H.W. Egli Bull . These companies, and others, manufactured and marketed a variety of punched cards and unit record machines for creating, sorting, and tabulating punched cards, even after the development of electronic computers in the 1950s.
6,542	Both IBM and Remington Rand tied punched card purchases to machine leases, a violation of the US 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act. In 1932, the US government took both to court on this issue. Remington Rand settled quickly. IBM viewed its business as providing a service and that the cards were part of the machine. IBM fought all the way to the Supreme Court and lost in 1936; the court ruled that IBM could only set card specifications.: 300–301
6,543	"By 1937... IBM had 32 presses at work in Endicott, N.Y., printing, cutting and stacking five to 10 million punched cards every day." Punched cards were even used as legal documents, such as U.S. Government checks and savings bonds.
6,544	During World War II punched card equipment was used by the Allies in some of their efforts to decrypt Axis communications. See, for example, Central Bureau in Australia. At Bletchley Park in England, "some 2 million punched cards a week were being produced, indicating the sheer scale of this part of the operation". In Nazi Germany, punched cards were used for the censuses of various regions and other purposes .
6,545	Punched card technology developed into a powerful tool for business data-processing. By 1950 punched cards had become ubiquitous in industry and government. "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate," a warning that appeared on some punched cards distributed as documents such as checks and utility bills to be returned for processing, became a motto for the post-World War II era.
6,546	In 1956 IBM signed a consent decree requiring, amongst other things, that IBM would by 1962 have no more than one-half of the punched card manufacturing capacity in the United States. Tom Watson Jr.'s decision to sign this decree, where IBM saw the punched card provisions as the most significant point, completed the transfer of power to him from Thomas Watson, Sr.
6,547	The Univac UNITYPER introduced magnetic tape for data entry in the 1950s. During the 1960s, the punched card was gradually replaced as the primary means for data storage by magnetic tape, as better, more capable computers became available. Mohawk Data Sciences introduced a magnetic tape encoder in 1965, a system marketed as a keypunch replacement which was somewhat successful. Punched cards were still commonly used for entering both data and computer programs until the mid-1980s when the combination of lower cost magnetic disk storage, and affordable interactive terminals on less expensive minicomputers made punched cards obsolete for these roles as well.: 151 However, their influence lives on through many standard conventions and file formats. The terminals that replaced the punched cards, the IBM 3270 for example, displayed 80 columns of text in text mode, for compatibility with existing software. Some programs still operate on the convention of 80 text columns, although fewer and fewer do as newer systems employ graphical user interfaces with variable-width type fonts.
6,548	The terms punched card, punch card, and punchcard were all commonly used, as were IBM card and Hollerith card . IBM used "IBM card" or, later, "punched card" at first mention in its documentation and thereafter simply "card" or "cards". Specific formats were often indicated by the number of character positions available, e.g. 80-column card. A sequence of cards that is input to or output from some step in an application's processing is called a card deck or simply deck. The rectangular, round, or oval bits of paper punched out were called chad or chips . Sequential card columns allocated for a specific use, such as names, addresses, multi-digit numbers, etc., are known as a field. The first card of a group of cards, containing fixed or indicative information for that group, is known as a master card. Cards that are not master cards are detail cards.
6,549	The Hollerith punched cards used for the 1890 U.S. census were blank. Following that, cards commonly had printing such that the row and column position of a hole could be easily seen. Printing could include having fields named and marked by vertical lines, logos, and more. "General purpose" layouts were also available. For applications requiring master cards to be separated from following detail cards, the respective cards had different upper corner diagonal cuts and thus could be separated by a sorter. Other cards typically had one upper corner diagonal cut so that cards not oriented correctly, or cards with different corner cuts, could be identified.
6,550	Herman Hollerith was awarded three patents in 1889 for electromechanical tabulating machines. These patents described both paper tape and rectangular cards as possible recording media. The card shown in U.S. patent 395,781 of January 8 was printed with a template and had hole positions arranged close to the edges so they could be reached by a railroad conductor's ticket punch, with the center reserved for written descriptions. Hollerith was originally inspired by railroad tickets that let the conductor encode a rough description of the passenger:
6,551	I was traveling in the West and I had a ticket with what I think was called a punch photograph...the conductor...punched out a description of the individual, as light hair, dark eyes, large nose, etc. So you see, I only made a punch photograph of each person.: 15
6,552	When use of the ticket punch proved tiring and error-prone, Hollerith developed the pantograph "keyboard punch". It featured an enlarged diagram of the card, indicating the positions of the holes to be punched. A printed reading board could be placed under a card that was to be read manually.: 43
6,553	Hollerith envisioned a number of card sizes. In an article he wrote describing his proposed system for tabulating the 1890 U.S. census, Hollerith suggested a card 3 by 5+1⁄2 inches of Manila stock "would be sufficient to answer all ordinary purposes." The cards used in the 1890 census had round holes, 12 rows and 24 columns. A reading board for these cards can be seen at the Columbia University Computing History site. At some point, 3+1⁄4 by 7+3⁄8 inches became the standard card size. These are the dimensions of the then-current paper currency of 1862–1923. This size was needed in order to use available banking-type storage for the 60,000,000 punched cards to come nationwide. Hollerith's original system used an ad hoc coding system for each application, with groups of holes assigned specific meanings, e.g. sex or marital status. His tabulating machine had up to 40 counters, each with a dial divided into 100 divisions, with two indicator hands; one which stepped one unit with each counting pulse, the other which advanced one unit every time the other dial made a complete revolution. This arrangement allowed a count up to 9,999. During a given tabulating run counters were assigned specific holes or, using relay logic, combination of holes.
6,554	Later designs led to a card with ten rows, each row assigned a digit value, 0 through 9, and 45 columns. This card provided for fields to record multi-digit numbers that tabulators could sum, instead of their simply counting cards. Hollerith's 45 column punched cards are illustrated in Comrie's The application of the Hollerith Tabulating Machine to Brown's Tables of the Moon.
6,555	By the late 1920s, customers wanted to store more data on each punched card. Thomas J. Watson Sr., IBM's head, asked two of his top inventors, Clair D. Lake and J. Royden Pierce, to independently develop ways to increase data capacity without increasing the size of the punched card. Pierce wanted to keep round holes and 45 columns but to allow each column to store more data, Lake suggested rectangular holes, which could be spaced more tightly, allowing 80 columns per punched card, thereby nearly doubling the capacity of the older format. Watson picked the latter solution, introduced as The IBM Card, in part because it was compatible with existing tabulator designs and in part because it could be protected by patents and give the company a distinctive advantage.
6,556	This IBM card format, introduced in 1928, has rectangular holes, 80 columns, and 10 rows. Card size is 7+3⁄8 by 3+1⁄4 inches . The cards are made of smooth stock, 0.007 inches thick. There are about 143 cards to the inch . In 1964, IBM changed from square to round corners. They come typically in boxes of 2000 cards or as continuous form cards. Continuous form cards could be both pre-numbered and pre-punched for document control .
6,557	Initially designed to record responses to yes–no questions, support for numeric, alphabetic and special characters was added through the use of columns and zones. The top three positions of a column are called zone punching positions, 12 , 11, and 0 . For decimal data the lower ten positions are called digit punching positions, 0 through 9. An arithmetic sign can be specified for a decimal field by overpunching the field's rightmost column with a zone punch: 12 for plus, 11 for minus . For Pound sterling pre-decimalization currency a penny column represents the values zero through eleven; 10 , 11, then 0 through 9 as above. An arithmetic sign can be punched in the adjacent shilling column.: 9 Zone punches had other uses in processing, such as indicating a master card.
6,558	Diagram: Note: The 11 and 12 zones were also called the X and Y zones, respectively.
6,559	In 1931, IBM began introducing upper-case letters and special characters . The 26 letters have two punches . The languages of Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Portugal and Finland require up to three additional letters; their punching is not shown here.: 88–90 Most special characters have two or three punches ; a few special characters were exceptions: "&" is 12 only, "-" is 11 only, and "/" is 0 + 1). The Space character has no punches.: 38 The information represented in a column by a combination of zones and digits is dependent on the use of that column. For example, the combination "12-1" is the letter "A" in an alphabetic column, a plus signed digit "1" in a signed numeric column, or an unsigned digit "1" in a column where the "12" has some other use. The introduction of EBCDIC in 1964 defined columns with as many as six punches . IBM and other manufacturers used many different 80-column card character encodings. A 1969 American National Standard defined the punches for 128 characters and was named the Hollerith Punched Card Code , honoring Hollerith.: 7
6,560	For some computer applications, binary formats were used, where each hole represented a single binary digit , every column is treated as a simple bit field, and every combination of holes is permitted.
6,561	For example, on the IBM 701 and IBM 704, card data was read, using an IBM 711, into memory in row binary format. For each of the twelve rows of the card, 72 of the 80 columns would be read into two 36-bit words; a control panel was used to select the 72 columns to be read. Software would translate this data into the desired form. One convention was to use columns 1 through 72 for data, and columns 73 through 80 to sequentially number the cards, as shown in the picture above of a punched card for FORTRAN. Such numbered cards could be sorted by machine so that if a deck was dropped the sorting machine could be used to arrange it back in order. This convention continued to be used in FORTRAN, even in later systems where the data in all 80 columns could be read.
6,562	As an aid to humans who had to deal with the punched cards, the IBM 026 and later 029 and 129 key punch machines could print human-readable text above each of the 80 columns.
6,563	As a prank, punched cards could be made where every possible punch position had a hole. Such "lace cards" lacked structural strength, and would frequently buckle and jam inside the machine.
6,564	The IBM 80-column punched card format dominated the industry, becoming known as just IBM cards, even though other companies made cards and equipment to process them.
6,565	One of the most common punched card formats is the IBM 5081 card format, a general purpose layout with no field divisions. This format has digits printed on it corresponding to the punch positions of the digits in each of the 80 columns. Other punched card vendors manufactured cards with this same layout and number.
6,566	Long cards were available with a scored stub on either end which, when torn off, left an 80 column card. The torn off card is called a stub card.
6,567	80-column cards were available scored, on either end, creating both a short card and a stub card when torn apart. Short cards can be processed by other IBM machines. A common length for stub cards was 51 columns. Stub cards were used in applications requiring tags, labels, or carbon copies.
6,568	According to the IBM Archive: IBM's Supplies Division introduced the Port-A-Punch in 1958 as a fast, accurate means of manually punching holes in specially scored IBM punched cards. Designed to fit in the pocket, Port-A-Punch made it possible to create punched card documents anywhere. The product was intended for "on-the-spot" recording operations—such as physical inventories, job tickets and statistical surveys—because it eliminated the need for preliminary writing or typing of source documents.
6,569	In 1969 IBM introduced a new, smaller, round-hole, 96-column card format along with the IBM System/3 low-end business computer. These cards have tiny, 1 mm diameter circular holes, smaller than those in paper tape. Data are stored in 6-bit BCD, with three rows of 32 characters each, or 8-bit EBCDIC. In this format, each column of the top tiers are combined with two punch rows from the bottom tier to form an 8-bit byte, and the middle tier is combined with two more punch rows, so that each card contains 64 bytes of 8-bit-per-byte binary coded data. As in the 80 column card, readable text was printed in the top section of the card. There was also a 4th row of 32 characters that could be printed. This format was never widely used; it was IBM-only, but they did not support it on any equipment beyond the System/3, where it was quickly superseded by the 1973 IBM 3740 Data Entry System using 8-inch floppy disks.
6,570	The Powers/Remington Rand card format was initially the same as Hollerith's; 45 columns and round holes. In 1930, Remington Rand leap-frogged IBM's 80 column format from 1928 by coding two characters in each of the 45 columns – producing what is now commonly called the 90-column card.: 142 There are two sets of six rows across each card. The rows in each set are labeled 0, 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8 and 9. The even numbers in a pair are formed by combining that punch with a 9 punch. Alphabetic and special characters use 3 or more punches.
6,571	The British Powers-Samas company used a variety of card formats for their unit record equipment. They began with 45 columns and round holes. Later 36, 40 and 65 column cards were provided. A 130 column card was also available – formed by dividing the card into two rows, each row with 65 columns and each character space with 5 punch positions. A 21 column card was comparable to the IBM Stub card.: 47–51
6,572	Mark sense cards, developed by Reynold B. Johnson at IBM, have printed ovals that could be marked with a special electrographic pencil. Cards would typically be punched with some initial information, such as the name and location of an inventory item. Information to be added, such as quantity of the item on hand, would be marked in the ovals. Card punches with an option to detect mark sense cards could then punch the corresponding information into the card.
6,573	Aperture cards have a cut-out hole on the right side of the punched card. A piece of 35 mm microfilm containing a microform image is mounted in the hole. Aperture cards are used for engineering drawings from all engineering disciplines. Information about the drawing, for example the drawing number, is typically punched and printed on the remainder of the card.
6,574	IBM's Fred M. Carroll developed a series of rotary presses that were used to produce punched cards, including a 1921 model that operated at 460 cards per minute . In 1936 he introduced a completely different press that operated at 850 cpm. Carroll's high-speed press, containing a printing cylinder, revolutionized the company's manufacturing of punched cards. It is estimated that between 1930 and 1950, the Carroll press accounted for as much as 25 percent of the company's profits.
6,575	Discarded printing plates from these card presses, each printing plate the size of an IBM card and formed into a cylinder, often found use as desk pen/pencil holders, and even today are collectible IBM artifacts .
6,576	In the mid-1930s a box of 1,000 cards cost $1.05 .
6,577	While punched cards have not been widely used for generations, the impact was so great for most of the 20th century that they still appear from time to time in popular culture. For example:
6,578	A common example of the requests often printed on punched cards which were to be individually handled, especially those intended for the public to use and return is "Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate" .: 43–55 Coined by Charles A. Phillips, it became a motto for the post–World War II era , and was widely mocked and satirized. Some 1960s students at Berkeley wore buttons saying: "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. I am a student". The motto was also used for a 1970 book by Doris Miles Disney with a plot based around an early computer dating service and a 1971 made-for-TV movie based on that book, and a similarly titled 1967 Canadian short film, Do Not Fold, Staple, Spindle or Mutilate.
6,579	ANSI INCITS 21-1967 , Rectangular Holes in Twelve-Row Punched Cards ) Specifies the size and location of rectangular holes in twelve-row 3+1⁄4-inch-wide punched cards.
6,580	ANSI X3.11-1990 American National Standard Specifications for General Purpose Paper Cards for Information Processing
6,581	ANSI X3.26-1980 Hollerith Punched Card Code
6,582	ISO 1681:1973 Information processing – Unpunched paper cards – Specification
6,583	ISO 6586:1980 Data processing – Implementation of the ISO 7- bit and 8- bit coded character sets on punched cards. Defines ISO 7-bit and 8-bit character sets on punched cards as well as the representation of 7-bit and 8-bit combinations on 12-row punched cards. Derived from, and compatible with, the Hollerith Code, ensuring compatibility with existing punched card files.
6,584	Processing of punched cards was handled by a variety of machines, including:
6,585	The term "batch processing" originates in the traditional classification of methods of production as job production , batch production , and flow production .
6,586	Early computers were capable of running only one program at a time. Each user had sole control of the machine for a scheduled period of time. They would arrive at the computer with program and data, often on punched paper cards and magnetic or paper tape, and would load their program, run and debug it, and carry off their output when done.
6,587	As computers became faster the setup and takedown time became a larger percentage of available computer time. Programs called monitors, the forerunners of operating systems, were developed which could process a series, or "batch", of programs, often from magnetic tape prepared offline. The monitor would be loaded into the computer and run the first job of the batch. At the end of the job it would regain control and load and run the next until the batch was complete. Often the output of the batch would be written to magnetic tape and printed or punched offline. Examples of monitors were IBM's Fortran Monitor System, SOS , and finally IBSYS for IBM's 709x systems in 1960.
6,588	Third-generation computers capable of multiprogramming began to appear in the 1960s. Instead of running one batch job at a time, these systems can have multiple batch programs running at the same time in order to keep the system as busy as possible. One or more programs might be awaiting input, one actively running on the CPU, and others generating output. Instead of offline input and output, programs called spoolers read jobs from cards, disk, or remote terminals and place them in a job queue to be run. In order to prevent deadlocks the job scheduler needs to know each job's resource requirements—memory, magnetic tapes, mountable disks, etc., so various scripting languages were developed to supply this information in a structured way. Probably the most well-known is IBM's Job Control Language . Job schedulers select jobs to run according to a variety of criteria, including priority, memory size, etc. Remote batch is a procedure for submitting batch jobs from remote terminals, often equipped with a punch card reader and a line printer. Sometimes asymmetric multiprocessing is used to spool batch input and output for one or more large computers using an attached smaller and less-expensive system, as in the IBM System/360 Attached Support Processor.
6,589	The first general purpose time sharing system, Compatible Time-Sharing System , was compatible with batch processing. This facilitated transitioning from batch processing to interactive computing.
6,590	From the late 1960s onwards, interactive computing such as via text-based computer terminal interfaces , and later graphical user interfaces became common. Non-interactive computation, both one-off jobs such as compilation, and processing of multiple items in batches, became retrospectively referred to as batch processing, and the term batch job became common. Early use is particularly found at the University of Michigan, around the Michigan Terminal System .
6,591	Although timesharing did exist, its use was not robust enough for corporate data processing; none of this was related to the earlier unit record equipment, which was human-operated.
6,592	Non-interactive computation remains pervasive in computing, both for general data processing and for system "housekeeping" tasks . A high-level program is today most often called a script, and written in scripting languages, particularly shell scripts for system tasks; in IBM PC DOS and MS-DOS this is instead known as a batch file. That includes UNIX-based computers, Microsoft Windows, macOS , and even smartphones. A running script, particularly one executed from an interactive login session, is often known as a job, but that term is used very ambiguously.
6,593	"There is no direct counterpart to z/OS batch processing in PC or UNIX systems. Batch jobs are typically executed at a scheduled time or on an as-needed basis. Perhaps the closest comparison is with processes run by an at or cron command in UNIX, although the differences are significant."
6,594	Batch applications are still critical in most organizations in large part because many common business processes are amenable to batch processing. While online systems can also function when manual intervention is not desired, they are not typically optimized to perform high-volume, repetitive tasks. Therefore, even new systems usually contain one or more batch applications for updating information at the end of the day, generating reports, printing documents, and other non-interactive tasks that must complete reliably within certain business deadlines.
6,595	Some applications are amenable to flow processing, namely those that only need data from a single input at once : start the next step for each input as it completes the previous step. In this case flow processing lowers latency for individual inputs, allowing them to be completed without waiting for the entire batch to finish. However, many applications require data from all records, notably computations such as totals. In this case the entire batch must be completed before one has a usable result: partial results are not usable.
6,596	Modern batch applications make use of modern batch frameworks such as Jem The Bee, Spring Batch or implementations of JSR 352 written for Java, and other frameworks for other programming languages, to provide the fault tolerance and scalability required for high-volume processing. In order to ensure high-speed processing, batch applications are often integrated with grid computing solutions to partition a batch job over a large number of processors, although there are significant programming challenges in doing so. High volume batch processing places particularly heavy demands on system and application architectures as well. Architectures that feature strong input/output performance and vertical scalability, including modern mainframe computers, tend to provide better batch performance than alternatives.
6,597	Scripting languages became popular as they evolved along with batch processing.
6,598	A batch window is "a period of less-intensive online activity", when the computer system is able to run batch jobs without interference from, or with, interactive online systems.
6,599	A bank's end-of-day jobs require the concept of cutover, where transaction and data are cut off for a particular day's batch activity .
6,600	As requirements for online systems uptime expanded to support globalization, the Internet, and other business needs, the batch window shrank and increasing emphasis was placed on techniques that would require online data to be available for a maximum amount of time.

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