Application Specific Punched Cards

• 229673 Globe generic railroad card
• 6947 EDM generic railroad card
• Burlington Northern
• Canadian National
• Chesapeake and Ohio Railway
• Conrail movment and route card
• Great Northern Railway

• Remington Rand
• Exact-O-Matic

• IBM 829422 generic retail card
• Northwestern Bell telephone bill
• Texas National Bank charge card

• Electrohome Limited Warranty Registration
• Selective Service System certificate

• American Motors stock card
• Electrowärme Sörnewitz
• Gardner Denver automatic wire-wrap machine
• General Motors Delco
• The Hardware & Supply Company
• Mainzer Volksbank

• University of California at Berkeley Library
• Georgia State University Library
• Iowa State University Library

• University of Arizona registration

229673 Globe generic railroad card

This generic railroad card describes a record that has 4 variants. The tag field, in column 1, can be either blank or a plus sign (encoded as a punch in row 12). If a plus sign, the card could be either a switch card or a 4640 header card. 4640 hearder cards begin with either A or B in column 2 and either X, Y or Z in column 3. If column 1 is blank, the card describes one railroad car. For a car, if columns 2 and 3 contain 18, the card contains free-form data, text about that car. If columns 2 and 3 contain 02, the card contains a complex formatted record describing the car, its contents, and scheduling.

The rail industry has a huge inventory management problem dealing with huge numbers of railroad cars that must be sorted into trains, hauled to intermediate or final destinations and delivered to the right side tracks. Once the railroads adopted the use of punched cards, one card would be punched for each car and then, at each yard, a deck of cards would be maintained for each siding showing what cards were on that siding. When a train was made up to haul elsewhere, the cards for each car in that train would be gathered into a card deck, the train list, that went with that train. Header cards were needed for each deck of cards to describe what track or what train the deck represented.

This rather dirty card was printed by Globe.

6947 EDM generic railroad card

Like the 229673 Globe card this is also a generic card. In this case, the card allows for five different variant data formats, apparently distinguished by a control code punched in column 1. While the Globe card only dealt with railroad cars, this card must date from the era of piggyback (trailer on flatcar) service, since the design allows for car or trailer numbers.

This card was printed by EDM.

Burlington Northern Detail

The Burlington Northern began operation in 1970, when use of punched-cards was the expected tool for data processing. Use of punched cards in the railroad business predates the use of computers. It was common to punch one card for each car or truck trailer being hauled by rail. These cards indicated everything about the car or trailer that was relevant to the make-up of the train, and the deck of cards describing the train, the train-list, was routinely hauled in the caboose. On arrival at a railroad yard, the train-list was sorted on an electromechanical sorter in order to determine which cars should be delivered to what track in the yard, and then additional sorting procedures were followed in order to select cars from the various tracks to be made up into outgoing trains.

The layout of this card has just enough similarity to the layout of the 229673 Globe card to suggest that there was probably a North American industry wide standard for the cards used to construct train lists. This would make it possible for the cards used to track train cars to follow the cars themselves when cars are interchanged between different railroads.

This card was printed by N. C. Co.

Canadian National

The Canadian National Railway designed this card to record details of each car, locomotive or train stored in one of its railroad yards. As cars, locomotives or trains were sorted into the yard, a card would be produced for each.

This card was printed by Compro. The presence of the modern CN logo shows that the card was printed after 1960.

Chesapeake and Ohio Railway

In 1963, an "affiliation" was formed between, the Baltimore_and_Ohio_Railroad, formed in 1830. The two railroads continued operating separately but shared numerous resources until 1973 when their operations were combined into the Chessie System. This card, dates from the affiliation era.

There are 6 different variant data formats documented on this card, distinguished by the value punched in the tag field, column 1. While many of the fields of this card are similar to those of the 229673 Globe card, their layout is sufficiently different to suggest that data processing standards in the railroad industry were not universal.

This card was printed by Pryor.

A Conrail Movement and Route Card

Conrail corporation began operation in 1976, somewhat late in the punched-card era. Punched cards were such an effective approach to train-list maintenance that as computers replaced electromechanical equipment, the underlying procedures remained almost unchanged until networking eliminated the need to physically haul the train-list along with the train.

Like the 6947 EDM card the fields on this card clearly permit it to be used for both rairload cars and truck trailers in piggyback service. Unlike the other railroad cards in this collection, the bottom half of this card is designed to be filled out by hand with some kind of car inspection report.

This card was printed by Advanced Business Systems.

Great Northern Railway

The Great Northern was an ancestor of the Burlington Northern, so this card must predate the 1970 merger that created the BN. As such, this card dates from the era when punched-card data processing was unquestioned as the symbol of high-technology as applied to the railroads.

There is no obvious relationship between the layout of this card and the later Burlington Northern card.

This card was printed by Data Documents.

Remington Rand

This 90-column Remington Rand card from the late 1940s is divided into fields for recording a single financial transaction, incluing spaces to code such things as the client, date, check number, textual description of the transaction, salesman, account and amount. Remington Rand's interpreters and punches could print text at the top of each 45-column row, so the card has rows of clear space for that text.

The layout of this card is identical to that of the Exact-O-Matic card, but it does not acknowledge Exact-O-Matic; it did not need to do so because, while Exact-O-Matic held copyrights and trademarks, it had no specifically copyrighted the format of the cards it used.

This card was printed by Remington Rand.

Exact-O-Matic

In the late 1940s, Joe L. Schmitt, Jr. of Phoenix, Arizona, developed a punched-card procedure to convert single-entry bookkeeping records into double-entry records. In 1947, he finished development of a plug-board to program Remington Rand tabulating machines to perform his procedure, He published two booklets on his Exact-O-Matic system in 1948 and 1949, and in 1951 he was granted the Exact-O-Matic trademark. Between 1949 and 1951, Schmitt licensed the Exact-O-Matic system to 11 regional dealerships. This information comes from Schmitt v. Commissioner, 30 T.C. 322, US Tax Court, May 20, 1958.

Note that the card explicitly states (at the far right) that Exact-O-Matic holds copyrights and patents from 1948. This notice is not the same as a claim of copyright on this card, and it does not appear that any patent was ever granted.

The layout of this card is identical to that of the Remington Rand P-6648 card.

This card was printed by Remington Rand.

IBM 829422 generic retail card

This card was apparently sold for a generic retail application. The legend "Do not fold or mutilate" makes it clear that the card was not intended for the sheltered world of the data-processing center, but was to be handled by untrained members of the public. A card with the upper left corner removed along the perforated line, following the instructions to the cashier in the upper left, would read as if it had been punched in column 1 row 12. This suggests that customers might see the entire card as a price tag.

The lack of field labels (aside from CATEGORY is a puzzle, but it is highly likely that IBM had standard software that used the fields in fixed ways. The lack of labels might have been intended to deter customers from attempting to alter the data on the card. Obvious fields (other than category) would include price, inventory number, abbreviated product name, and perhaps supplier number and supplier name. I speculate that columns 51 to 57 are reserved for the price, with 55 being reserved for the decimal point.

This card was printed by IBM.

Northwestern Bell telephone bill

During the month of October 1982, the owner of telephone number (319)345-6789 used telephone services costing $385.36. The itemized bill, printed by a computer, came with this punched card that was to be returned with a check. On receipt by the telephone company, clerical staff would verify that the check was for the same amount as the bill, stamp the card as paid, and add it to a deck of cards that would be read by the accounting system to update the telephone company's books.

The same accounting system had previously printed the itemized bill and punched the card. After punching, the card was run through an interpreter to print some of its content in the spaces along the top of the card. Those spaces do not align with the punches representing the same data, and some fields are printed in a different order.

This card was printed by DataDdocuments.

The phone number on this card has been altered (both as printed and as punched) to protect the donor's privacy.

Texas National Bank charge card

On July 8, 1960, Fred Stone charged $7.96 to his Texas National Bank charge card at Holland Music. The clerk had a book of charge-card receipts each separated from a punch card by a layer of carbon paper. The clerk hand-wrote the transaction record on the receipt, creating a written record on the punch card. An embossing machine recorded the merchant's name and account number, but the clerk hand copied the charge card number from Mr. Stone's charge card, and then had Mr. Stone sign the paperwork. The punched-card portion was eventually processed by the bank, which returned it to the customer with the next month's charge card bill.

This card was obviously punched after it was filled out (writing a carbon copy over holes in a punched card would have seriously disrupted the writing). The card has no printing to help interpret the punches, and the scallops on the left side are clear evidence that it was torn from a booklet.

There is no hint on this card of who printed it; the image has been edited to avoid releasing Fred Stone's full signature.

This card was given by Fred Stone

Electrohome Limited Warranty Registration

Electrohome Ltd., one of the largest manufactures of consumer electronics in Canada, included one of these warranty registration cards with each product sold. The card was pre-punched with the model number, model name and serial number, and customers were to fill in the date and place of purchase, along with their own name and address. Warranty registration may have actually confered some protection to the customer, but the registration card is also a powerful tool for building a customer database for direct marketing campaigns.

As is typical of Canadian commercial practice, this card is thoroughly bilingual.

This card was printed by PDC.

This card was given by K. McQuiggen

Selective Service System certificate

Between 1948 and 1969, men attending college in the United States could receive a draft deferment if they were full-time students (women were not subject to the military draft). To obtain this deferment, the educational institution had to provide a certificate of enrollment. Initially, these certificates were processed manually, but college enrollment skyrocketed during the period when student deferments were offered, so the Selective Service System provided an alternative form of certificate, in punched card format. The school was expected to punch the cards, interpret them (so the required information was printed across the top, and sign, stamp or otherwise authenticate the cards before providing them to the students who could then mail them to their local draft board.

This card was printed by EAC.

American Motors stock card

American Motors used this card design in at the start of the 1970s. At the time, American Motors was the 4^th largest car maker in the United States. Car order forms from dealers went to a keypunch office where the orders were transcribed onto these cards and vehicle identification numbers were assigned. These cards were then sorted to determine which assembly line would build the card, and reports generated by processing these cards determined how many of each component needed to be manufactured or purchased.

The back of the card is intended to be filled out by hand, and may relate to the actual sale of the car. In that case, the card must have followed the car down the assembly line during manufacture and eventually made its way to the dealer with the car.

In the summer of 1972, Douglas Jones had the job of devising a prototype system to demonstrate how dealers could directly enter car orders on line, eliminating the need for the keypunch office.

This card was printed by EAC.

Electrowärme Sörnewitz

Siemens-Elektrowärme GmbH (Siemens Electric Heater Company) took over a plant in Sörnewitz in 1922 and converted it from making soap and chocolate packaging equipment to electric heaters. Post World War II, under the East German government, the company was renamed VEB Elektrowärme Sörnewitz. EWS, as it was known, expanded its product range to a variety of home appliances and also telephone switchboard frames.

As with many industries in the punched-card era, EWS designed one punched card to handle many different variant record formats. The first two columns of the card hold the card-style code. 4 styles are documented on this card: Kunden (customers), Lieferanten (suppliers), Memorial (transaction record), Lager-Belast (shipping).

This card was printed by Reichenbach.

Gardner Denver automatic wire-wrap machine

Gardner Denver Corporation, founded in 1859, was a major manufacturer of heavy industrial equipment; it merged with Ingersoll-Rand in 2019. In the early 1960's, Gardner Denver developed the wire-wrap machine. In the 1960s, wire-wrap technology was probably the dominant technology for wiring the backplanes of both mainframes and minicomputers. Burroughs, Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM were among the major users of wire-wrapped backplanes. One of the last major systems to use wire-wrap technology was the Patriot anti-missile system that was the center of much publicity during the Persian Gulf War.

In use, the wiring pattern of a backplane would be specified by a deck of punched cards, where each card gave the coordinates of the start and end of one wire. The Gardner Denver 14F wire-wrap machine was fully automatic, but not always successful -- the operator was responsible for noticing when it miswrapped a connection and correcting the problem. Earlier wire-wrap systems were semi-automatic; in those, the wire-wrap machine would automatically cut and strip the wire and position the wire-wrap tool over each pin to which the wire was to be connected; the operator would then handle the fine details of pressing the tool onto the pin before the machine finished wrapping the wire in place. However wire-wrap connetions were made, the result was a highly reliable solderless joint.

Mike Depot, who maintained Gardner-Denver wire-wrap machines in the late 1980's and early 1990's, sent me the attached images of the manual for the model 14F wire wrap machine. The cover, the the card reader. It is worth noting that the card reader shown is a model 026 keypunch with the numeric-only keyboard option; this keypunch dates from the early to mid 1960's, yet the manual was still in use over 20 years later! Heavy industrial machinery frequently has a useful lifetime far longer than that we usually associate with computer systems.

General Motors Delco

General Motors' Delco Electronics Division, which operated under that name from some time after 1936 until 1985, used this labor distribution card. In an operation such as Delco, skilled labor, from engineers to machinists, frequently did numerous relatively small jobs that needed to be charged to different accounts. Evidetly, when a worker finished some job, the worker would fill out the form and then send it to a keypunch clerk who would transcribe the inforation so that it could be processed by the accounting system.

This card was printed by Pryor.

The Hardware & Supply Company

The Hardware & Supply Company used this card to maintain its accounts payable file. The card has two sets of fields. The lower fields align with the card columns and document such things as the entry date, invoice date and due date, vendor, vendor's invoice number and internal invoice number, what ledger, what amount, discount, and net payable amout.

Apparently, the card was intended to be punched by a computer or accounting machine that only punched the card, without printing anything. The top line of the card, with fields that do not align with the card columns, contains blanks for selected data fields on the card that were evidently intended for printing by an interpreter.

This card design reflects the way cards were used in an era when plugboard-programmed electronic accounting machines were used and card files were also frequently examined by clerks without machine assistance. Such card formats continued in use in the computer era as the plugboard programs were replaced with computer programs (frequently written in the RPG language). Since the card's printer entered business in 1967, we know that this card dates from the computer era.

This card was printed by Hackett.

Mainzer Volksbank

The Mainzer Volksbank used this This Verfallkarte (expiration card) to carry information about a Handelswechsel (commercial bill of exchange).

The fields are: Konto-Nr (account number), Kopier-Nr (copy number), Buch.-Datum (posting date), Verfall (expiration date), Betrag (amount), Zalungsort (place of payment), and, redundantly, Bezogener (amount). The first amount field is given in DM and PF (Deutsche Marks and pfennig), a currency in use between 1948 and the adoption of the Euro in 1999; the field permits quantities up to DM 99,999,999.99. This card probably dates from the 1960s or 1970s.

This card was printed by MECO.

University of California at Berkeley Library

The only hint that this card was used by The University of California at Berkeley Library is in the return address on the post-card side of this card. It is not clear if this card was ever intended to be punched, although the right side of the form may have been intended to be punched, for example, with the call number of the book.

The card is designed to be filled out by a library patron when they want a book that is currently unavailable. The information required includes sufficient informatio to identify the book, the patrons priority in the event that other patrons also want the book, and the patrons postal address. The latter is required because, when the became available, the library would mail the card, as a postcard, to inform the patron that the book was available.

This card was printed by Globe.

Georgia State University Library

The Georgia State University Library used punched cards stored in pockets glued to the inside of book covers to control library circulation. When a book was checked out or returned, the librarian would put the card through a small desktop card reader to log the book in or out; the arrow on the card indicates which end of the card to put in the reader. On checkout, the librarian would also need to enter the borrower's identity by some other means. The printed warning "DO NOT REMOVE THIS CARD FROM THIS BOOK" directed at library patrons is bolder but offers less explanation than the notation on the Iowa State University Library card.

This card was punched to accompany the book Lhasa and its Mysteries: With a Record of the Expedition of 1903-1904 by L. A. Waddell (1904). The author and title is abbreviated WADDELL LHASA ITS MYSTER for punching on the card. The punching was done on a keypunch, as evidenced by the dot-matrix print perfectly aligned with the card columns. The notation 2DS 785.W2 punched at the left is neither a Dewey Decimal nor a Library of Congress catalog number.

This card was printed by GLOBE.

Iowa State University Library

The Iowa State University Library The notation along the top edge of the card and the instructions on the right make it clear that that cards of this sort were punched with identifying information for each book and used to check books in and out. Typically, catalog numbers are tied to the book's subject, while Cutter numbers encode the author's name.

As with the Georgia State University Library card, this card was designed to be permanently stored in a pocket inside a book cover, removed only when books are checked in or out of the library.

This card was printed by DD.

University of Arizona registration

When a student registered at the University of Arizona, they were handed a stack of pre-punched and interpreted cards. If the student had no registration encumbrance, the permit to register was in that stack. If there was an encumbrance, an encumbrance card directed them to the table where they had to pay their unpaid fees or take whatever other action was required in order to get their permit to register. If the Arizona registration process was typical, the student would then proceed to departmental tables to pick up cards for each class they wanted to take, and then present those cards, with their permit to register, in order to complete the process.

These cards were printed by GLOBE.

New Jersey Turnpike Toll Ticket

Toll collection on the New Jersey Turnpike was automated using old-style round-hole punched cards as toll tickets. This particular card has artwork celebrating the US bicentennial in 1976. The punching on this card, with a mix of round and rectangular holes, is clear evidence that the card was punched on two different machines! Presumably, tickets distributed at each entrance ramp were prepunched with the entrance number, and at the end of the shift or the end of the day, all tickets collected at each exit were punched with the exit number so that the batch of tickets could be processed to create a report of the total toll that should have been collected at that exit. A high resolution scan is available.

A UNIVAC Customer Engineering Service Report card

This card is punched using 45 columns of round-holes, the original Hollerith format, as adapted by Sperry/UNIVAC to store 90 columns of 6-bit data. In this case, the card is designed to hold a report of a service call by a Sperry/UNIVAC field-service engineer to a customer site, so the card has spaces for the engineer to report on expenses and parts required to fix the customer's computer. A high resolution scan is available.