Wednesday, September 16, 2009

What Is This ?


What is this ? There are these holes and all ?!?

3 comments:

Stan(KE5LEP) said...

This is an 80 column card. Developed before the computer age and used in the US census. Each column has punches that represent 4bits of binary data. Each group is called a nibble and each pair of 4 bits represent a character of data. The code used for these cards is called EBCDIC. Google "EBCDIC" for more information. During my time at Oklahoma University I assisted with the conversion from card data to data from files stored on workstations.

KE5NCP said...

It was also called a "punch card" and was used to program robotic machines before computers, it was the program.

Stan(KE5LEP) said...

Scott,
Where did the photo go?
It isn't visible now.
Stan