One could argue that the information age began with the punch card, and that data processing as a transformational technology began with its 1928 redesign by IBM. This thin piece of cardboard, with 80 columns of tiny rectangular holes made the world quantifiable. It allowed data to be recorded, stored, and analyzed. For nearly 50 years, it remained the primary vehicle for processing the essential facts and figures that comprised countless industries, in every corner of the globe.
A business-savvy design
In selecting IBM engineer and inventor Clair D. Lake’s groundbreaking 80-column, rectangular-hole design, IBM leadership made a conscious decision to retool the card in a proprietary way that it would not only double the amount of data that could be stored, it would be compatible only with IBM-manufactured machines.
Punched card productivity
IBM soon began promoting the newly designed card as the “IBM Card,” leveraging the proprietary appearance the rectangular holes gave the card. Production of IBM cards increased rapidly, soon becoming the source for 20 percent of the company’s profits. In the mid-1930s, IBM had 32 presses at work at its Endicott plant alone, printing, cutting and stacking five to 10 million punched cards—every day.
Government contracts and government checks
During Roosevelt’s New Deal, IBM punched cards were not only used for tabulation and recordkeeping for sizeable government contracts, but they were also used to print the actual government-issued checks. For the 1935 Social Security Administration contract—considered at the time to be "the world's largest bookkeeping job"—millions of IBM punched cards were used. In fact, federal checks were based on IBM’s card design up until the mid-1980s.
Transforming recordkeeping in higher education
During the mid-twentieth century, universities and learning institutions around the world began to adopt the use of IBM punched cards for recording class registration and recording transcripts. Soon, universities began to customize the visual design of the card to represent their school’s brand while maintaining the functional 80-column design.
Billing, payroll, inventory and more
The IBM cards’ utilization in business and industry continued to become more widespread with the advent of the computer age. Police departments used them to track criminal records, and libraries used them to track books. In the private sector, they were used for customer billing, payroll and factory management. Utility companies realized they could save processing time by printing the actual bill directly onto the punch card. IBM’s 80-column card became more than an industry standard – it was a familiar household object.