Data Cards with Fixed Fields

Part of the Punched Card Collection
by Douglas W. Jones
THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Department of Computer Science

Click on any image for a high-resolution version. All images were scanned at 600 dpi and edited to remove streaks caused by bad (or dust occluded) pixels in the scanner. Note that, prior to 1978, all material printed in the US without a copyright notice was automatically in the public domain; this also applies to most material printed before 1989 without a notice. Beware, however, that institutional logos are typically protected by trademark law and cannot be used in a manner that conflicts with the trademark owner's rights.

Data Card 2620-010, 16 5-column fields

[Cream punch-card with 16 5-column fields]

At first glance, this appears to be a generic IBM 5081 card with an added row of boxed column numbers along the top, but on closer inspection, the column numbers are in groups of 5, thus making it easy to use these cards for tabular data.

This card was printed by Data Card.

This card was donated by K. McQuiggen.

DSI 327, 8 10-column fields

[Pink punch-card with 8 10-column fields]

This is an example of a typical generic card, widely used both by programmers and for data processing. The printing on the cards can be thought of as dividing the card into 8 fields of 10 columns each, with each columns subdivided into 2 5-column fields, or a programmer might think of the rulings on the card as helpful tab stops for dealing with the indenting structure of free-form but deeply nested programming languages such as Algol or PL/I.

This card was printed by DSI.

DD 733727, 20 4-column fields

[punch-card with 8 10-column fields]
[punch-card with 8 10-column fields]

The two cards above were printed from different plates, as judged by evidence of damage to the printing plates, but the plates were made from the same artwork. Users could order any color stripe, independent of the printing plate used.

4-colmun fields are of limited value, but both 8 and 12-column fields make sense for numeric data, and many assembly languages used colums 1-7 for labels columns 8-15 for operation codes, and colums 16 and up for operands and comments. This card could easily support that usage.

This card was printed by DD.

Globe 9500, 20 4-column fields

[punch-card with 8 10-column fields]

The artwork on this card differs from the DD 733727 in two ways: First, there is a horizontal line ruled across the bottom, and second, in addition to the printer's plate number 9500, there is the indication that this is "standard form 733727."

This card was printed by Globe.

Hummel 4834, 8 10-column fields

[punch-card with 8 10-column fields]

This card is divided in fields identically to the DSI 327, with three additions. First, it is clearly marked DATEN (Data), to indicate its intended use. Second, the card columns are indicated 4 extra times, including across the top in a row of boxed numbers. Also, the card has been printed with an orange stripe to help distinguish it from program cards and job-control cards.

Despite the clear marking, programmers who liked to use 5-space indents for indented blocks in Algol code were likely to use this card for program code.

This card was printed by Hummel.

IBM Denmark D 0055, 16 5-column fields

[blue punch-card with 8 10-column fields]

This card is divided into 16 fields of 5 columns each. The artwork adds just 17 vertical lines to the basic IBM 5081. As such, it is simpler than the otherwise equivalent THS nr 5 K or cards with 8 subdivided 10-column fields such as the DSI327.

The data punched on this card appears to be from some kind of database, and the arrangement of the data seems to have no relationship to the fields printed on the card. Note also the vertical jitter in the printing. This was probably from some kind of high-speed interpreter, since IBM's ubiquitous keypunches generally used a dot matrix print mechanism.

This card was printed by IBM Denmark.

Pryor 5280, 8 10-column fields

[blue punch-card with 8 10-column fields]

This card is divided into 8 10-column fields, with each field further subidivied into 3 3-colum fields and a 1-column field. If the cards were used for decimal numeric data with 8 numbers per card, these field divisions could have served much the same purpose as the commas conventionally used to divide numbers into 3-digit chunks.

The artwork on this card cloned IBM's similarly numbered 5280 card. The top edge of the card has boxed column numbers and rules allowing easy intrpretation of the print produced by a printing keypunch. The two rows of boxed column numbers below that are for use with the interpreters, machines that read cards and print on them what was punched. Different interpreters had different column spacing for their print mechanisms, and some of them printed (or could be arranged to print) in the space that is left blank on the card.

This card was printed by Pryor.

THS nr 5 K, 16 5-column fields

[THS card with 16 5-column fields]

This card with 16 5-column fields would have worked for most applications that used 8 10-column subdivided field cards, such as the DSI 327 or the Hummel 4834.

This card was printed by THS.

University of Washington, 20 4-column fields

[University of Washington card with 20 4-column fields]

The division of the card into 4-column fields suggests a somewhat unlikely data organization, as most data requires larger fields, but multiples of 4 columns would work for data fields of 8 or 12 columns each. It is also possible that the field divisions on this card are intended to help programmers. Many Algol and PL/I programmers in the 1960s used 4 and 8 column indentation to structure their code in exactly the way that C and C++ programmers continue doing to this day.

This card was printed by Globe.