Prescored Punched Cards

The basic idea of punched cards dates to the 19th century and the "modern" 80-column card dates to the 1920s. All of those early cards required specialized punches to record data on them. In 1956, Charles Holovka of IBM filed a patent application for a device IBM called the Portapunch (US Pat. 2,923,452). This was a lightweight handheld tablet into which a single card could be punched by simply pressing a stylus through a template over the card.

Cards made for portapunch use had pre-scored rectangles in each punch position so that the punching stylus would displace a neat rectangle of chad instead of making a ragged hole. The pre-scoring weakened the card sufficiently that only every other column could be used, giving only 40 data columns per card. Aside from this, Portapunch cards were entirely compatible with standard punched-card processing equipment.

• Compucorp/Monroe calculator program cards
• 228 position Votomatic ballot
• Multipurpose pre-scored convention ballot

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.

Compucorp/Monroe calculator program cards

Computer Design Corporation, incorporated in 1968, was a spinoff of Wyle Labs. Wyle had developed a calculator in 1962 that could execute programs directly from cards punched cards. The cards were pre-scored IBM Portapunch cards with one instruction per column. Initially, Computer Design acted as an OEM, selling calculators through Monroe and several other older companies, but in 1971, it began selling directly through its Compucorp division. Many of the Compucorp and Monroe calculators supported punched-card card readers. While a Portapunch card could hold 40 columns or 40 instructions, the format printed on these cards suggests that it was rare for programmers to use even 32. Compucorp continued using this card format in their The printing on these cards suggests that each instruction was made up of 3 fields of 3 bits each.

These cards were printed by IBM

A 228 position Votomatic ballot

In 1962, Joseph P. Harris, political science professor at the Univerity of California at Berkeley, filed a patent for the Votomatic voting machine (US Pat. 3,201,038). This was an adaptation of the Portapunch that allowed use of an inexpensive lightweight ballot marking device to record votes on voter-verifiable auditable paper ballots that could be tabulated using conventional punched-card equipment. Unfortunately, few voters actually understood how to verify their ballots and took the time to do so, leading to the downfall of the Votomatic system after the 2000 US Presidential election.

This 228 position card is perforated so that it can be torn into three pieces; the middle piece holds space for write-in votes and may be folded over the card to provide a bit of privacy when handling the card. The left end (as pictured), when torn off, may be processed using standard punch-card data processing equipment, while a short stub at the right end may be printed with a serial number (required in some jurisdictions) or used for binding ballots into pads for distribution at the polling place.

This card was distributed by Fidlar and Chambers (an election supply company) in the late 1990s, but the identity of the printer is unknown.

Multipurpose pre-scored convention ballot

A stack of pre-scored punched card ballots was issued as part of the credentials packet to each delegate to the 1984 Iowa State Democratic Convention, along with a bit of styrofoam to back ballots during punching and a paperclip to use as a punching stylus. Columns 1-16 are printed like an IBM 5081 card; this space is available to be punched on a conventional keypunch or high-speed punch. The card was pre-scored in Portapunch format in columns 17-68, using only the even-numbered columns.

The printing on the card further limits the use either to a yes-no ballot or a vote by candidate number ballot. Finally, there is space at the end of the ballot for the a delegate signature.

There is no printer's mark on this card.