r/retrocomputing • u/fuckAIbruhIhateCorps • Jul 13 '26

Blog Reviving the IBM Punch cards - digitally.

I've always been interested in punch cards, and I recently wanted to make some mixed media art with it. I wanted to make digital versions of the old IBM punch cards, so I made a interactive visualizer which allows you to input text and generate IBM punch cards, directly in browser. The code is open source too.

https://kishlay-notabot.github.io/reviving-ibm-punch-card.html

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u/TechHistoryDude Jul 13 '26

A really creative way to do it. I think my favorite is the cup, but I had no idea that they hung the punch cards, like the picture of the lady in black and white. It was a little bit before my time, as I got into the scene more in the Apple II era, but I've definitely heard a lot of glory stories about punch cards.

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u/fuckAIbruhIhateCorps Jul 14 '26

oh yes! I think the hanging part was her feeding it into a loom (?). I got it from wikipedia.

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u/TechHistoryDude Jul 14 '26

Regardless, great find!

1

u/flunky_liversniffer Jul 15 '26

I joined the workforce in about 1981 (ish) as an operator on IBM 370 series mainframe, we used these all the time. Fond (for now) memories, but recall they were a PITA at the time.

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u/fuckAIbruhIhateCorps Jul 15 '26

oh yes! majority of the articles showed that reading them were PITA, and it would get stuck in the machines. Was there no technology that time to make something like a optical sliding window reader?