A Collection of Punched Cards

Index of the Collection

Note that most of the cards illustrated here are included in multiple indeces!

• Institutional Cards
  • Cards with logos
    • Educational Institutions
    • Other Institutions
  • Cards Without Logos
• Generic Cards
  • Blank Cards
  • Printed Cards
• Cards for Programmers
  • Job Cards
  • Command Cards
  • Program Cards
  • Self Interpreting Cards
• Cards for Data
  • Fixed Fields
  • Application Specific
  • Aperture Cards
• Not really for Keypunch Use
  • Optical Mark Cards
  • Pre-Scored Cards
  • Ballots
  • Souvenir and Promotional Cards
  • Other

Publication

In 1996, duplicates of many cards in this collection were shared with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Some time probably not long before July 2022, They put up a web page Punch Cards for Data Processing. That page includes photos of many of the cards from this collection, along with material from their collection.

In 2002, David Margulis wrote a bit about this collection in his article When PC Still Means 'Punch Card' in the New York Times.

Images of many of the cards in this collection are included in the book Print Punch: Artefacts From the Punch Card Era published by CentreCentre, London, 2019.