From the invention of computer programming languages up to the mid-1970s, most computer programmers created, edited and stored their programs line by line on punch cards.

Punched cards, also known as punch cards, dated to the late 18th and early 19th centuries when they were used to “program” cloth-making machinery and looms.

Jun 8, 2012 · In a typical case you wrote the code by hand, then punched it onto cards. Each card holds one line of code (up to 80 columns). You took the card deck to be executed. Depending on backlog, …

Aug 10, 2025 · Common languages used during the punched card era were COBOL, ALGOL and Assembly Languages. The card shown here has a Fortran statement punched onto it. Think of …

Aug 12, 2025 · Punch card programming was used well into the 1980s, a mere 45 years ago. Even if you’ve used punch cards to program, it’s still pretty insane to think that this method was essentially …

Nov 9, 2022 · So how do you punch a card? Although there were some schemes for manually punching precut cards, those were mostly used for niche applications like voting, small schools with no …

How did punch card systems work? Professor Brailsford delves further into the era of mainframe computing with this hands-on look at punch cards.

Dec 21, 2025 · Yes, Punched card machines can be programmed. The vast majority of machines were used by businesses for accounting and stock control, but since the early 1930s a few were used by …

Jun 25, 2025 · Because each card only holds so much data, writing a program using punch cards (one card for each line of code) requires a stack of punched cards. To load the program or read punch …

Groups or "decks" of cards form programs and collections of data. The term is often used interchangeably with punch card, the difference being that an unused card is a "punch card," but …