I had a moment of déjà vu while working on this week’s research assignment on the history of Information Systems. While growing up, my mom worked as a key punch operator for United Airlines during the 1960’s and 1970’s. A key punch operator’s job was to manually keystroke the data into punched cards by punching holes in designated locations on the card. The cards were then fed into a mainframe computer to record employee and customer information. A key punch station consisted of a small desk with a keyboard similar to a typewriter, with hoppers for blank cards and stackers for punched cards. As you could imagine, everyday there were hundreds of punch cards that would be discarded due to improper entry. Employees were oftentimes encouraged to take home any cards that were not useable. I remember my mom coming home with boxes, containing hundreds of IBM punch cards in a wide variety of colors -- red, blue, green, and yellow. As kids, we couldn’t wait to leaf through them, sorting them by size, color, punch count, and more importantly figuring out what we could make out of them.
I know this doesn’t sound very exciting by today’s standards, but back then anything in color was a novelty. Almost everything was in black in white, printed documents, photographs, and TV’s. I remember using them around the house as note cards, to decorate our bikes for parades, to make paper airplanes, to build a house of cards, and yes, even to make Christmas ornaments. Today the cards are a pretty much obsolete, and the mainframe has been replaced with high-speed networks, LAN’s, and the internet. Every once in a while I stumble upon a punch card while rummaging through some old box in my mom’s attic or happen to see one lying around at a flee market. I fondly remember the fun and excitement we all had mixing, matching, and manufacturing works of art from those old IBM punch cards.
I know this doesn’t sound very exciting by today’s standards, but back then anything in color was a novelty. Almost everything was in black in white, printed documents, photographs, and TV’s. I remember using them around the house as note cards, to decorate our bikes for parades, to make paper airplanes, to build a house of cards, and yes, even to make Christmas ornaments. Today the cards are a pretty much obsolete, and the mainframe has been replaced with high-speed networks, LAN’s, and the internet. Every once in a while I stumble upon a punch card while rummaging through some old box in my mom’s attic or happen to see one lying around at a flee market. I fondly remember the fun and excitement we all had mixing, matching, and manufacturing works of art from those old IBM punch cards.
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