IBM keypunch cards
i started with computers in 1975....any old keypunchers out there...my children cant even connect keypunch with todays computers...not to mention a laptop...or the best cell phone technology
oldman 
Calico696 
Another JoeI did keypunch for one of the first 1-800 call centers (we did not have 1-800 even). We worked 11pm to 8am with the all night movies selling "Fabulous Platters" albums and 100% pure Zirconium "diamond" rings. After an ad ran, we took the calls and between commercials watched "The Falcon, The Falcon Returns, The Falcon Returns Again...." or hit the keypunch. I was 18, apparently only had two working fingers, and was not exactly a wiz at it. The one key I got to know well: DUP ---- if you did keypunch, you know what I mxean. you know what I mezan. you know what I meavn. you know what I mean.
mistergoogle Don't know too much about Keypunch..But what about typing and shorthand? Is that still taught in our schools?
joyful I did a summer science program where you had to load a 1000 card deck and run it through the reader just to load it's microcode to be able to connect with anything at the other end. Today your average coffee maker has more microcode and 1000 times more memory to it. A lady had to be hired just to look after that while the rest of the real terminals and modern printers/readers took care of themselves.
Everything else was terminals except a very small time where a professor decided he wanted to give the new guys what he had to go through for the first assignment. They had left over punches from 10 years before and a single reader still left. You had to stand in a stinking line waiting for 20 minutes before your batch had even gotten to a queue. I can remember two colleges I interviewed at that were extremely proud of their biggest of the big IBM machines they had. That also meant the outdated of the outdated, and the longest lines of the longest lines on their systems still doing batch. Very glad I never ended up at those schools.
GC joyful - Shorthand was not taught when I was in school (I graduated in 1986). Typing was though and the machines were manual.
Ugh, yes, I remember!! Only worked on them very briefly as part of cross-training at a market research company --- and I remember my phone bill being a punch card!
In HS I was in that 'special' club (you know the one) that got selected to work on the PET computers --- Woo Hoo! --- GC, I think my kids toys also have more memory than that hulk!
trekster3 I remember taking a tour of IBM when I was in the 6th grade where they showed us the mainframe computers and the boxes of key punch cards and gave an overview of how it all worked. (I grew up in IBM country - Poughkeepsie, NY)
A friend of mine completed her programming assignments, for her computer science degree, using key punch cards that had to be loaded. I recall the pain that the Computer majors would go through when they dropped their box of cards.
By the time I did a Summer job at IBM, I don't think they were still using keypunch. My job was to inspect the circuit boards for visual defects before and after testing.
By the time I got involved with computer programming, it was all on line. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to use key punch cards!
Coralie Coralie, I think I went on that same tour of IBM in Poughkeepsie, for some reason the picture of the mainframe stays with me. Any idea what years that would have been possible. I think I'm a bit older than you, but I do remember that. Just trying to remember if it was when I was in High School or maybe when I first started to work and at Crum and Forster and I went there for some reason...God, the mind does go when you get older, LOL.
Bessie We have a typist at work (that we pray will never retire), that takes shorthand (Gregg I think). Once I dictated a letter to her, and brought it home to show DD, she was amazed that those scribble actually meant something. There weren't always computers you know, LOL. I never learned it, though my sister did.
Bessie. There was Gregg or Pitman Shorthand and I have pins that I was awarded for doing 120 words per minute in shorthand in my high school business class. Always used shorthand and typing in my employment too until a few years ago when boss announced to all that the office was becoming computerized..We were given the option to take some computer courses or ...........So..goodbye shorthand. I will say that typing on a computer keyboard is so much more a pleasure than pounding away on those hard manual keys even the electric typrwriters were not that great.
Reggie Voter I remember when they took away the typewriter from my co-worker who knows shorthand, she cried. It got to the point where it was hard to get the typewriters serviced or replaced. She's learned to use the computer, though I think there are days she still misses her typewriter. She's in her early sixties and as soon as her husband is ready to North Carolina, she's gone. I will miss her more than words can say..she has a work ethic the same as me and together, we get things done!
Bessie - I took the tour around 1974 - 1975, can't remember when in the year it was.. I just remember that there were only 10 of us plus the teacher on this tour. I remember the elevated floors and the rooms being so cold for the computers. It might have been the main manufacturing plant on Rt 9. My elementary school was not too far from there - only about 10 minutes away.
I did work in the main plant for one summer when I was in college. That was an interesting job where I looked for issues on the computer boards all day long. There were 3 shifts of workers for that job and we were secured in a room without windows for the full day. Just box after box of computer boards to inspect. The woman who sat next to me had been working for IBM for 15 - 20 years. I could not imagine doing that type of job day in and day out for 15 years!
Must have been when I was in HS Coralie, I graduated in 1972, so it's conceivable that I went there while in HS
OK, I remember keypunch cards, too, but also mimeograph machines to make copies (very messy and not at all easy to read), Selectric typewriters with the little ball inside that you could change to use a different font (Yes! We had to do that!), and I also won awards for shorthand in H.S. In fact, I was awarded the John Gregg Memorial Shorthand Award for being the best shorthand student! (still have that little plaque around somewhere); and I still use my shorthand almost daily when taking down messages, for passwords, etc. (let them TRY to figure out my passwords written in shorthand on a post-it note! ha!). It's kind of like riding a bike...it's somewhere there in your brain still.
I learned shorthand a long time ago but I still use it now and then when I'm taking a long message. I don't remember all the shortcuts, but if I can do 3/4 of the notes in shorthand with a few written out, I've gotten the whole conversation down.
I also remember using shorthand sometimes when my kids were little for things like Christmas lists so no one but me could read them.
awakeagain My mom wrote in shorthand when she didn't want me to know what she was writing. We'd laugh about it in the family.
We still have a typewriter in the office to add stuff to invoices etc. The guy who comes and services it is getting up there!
Peggy C. I took COBOL & FORTRAN programming in college and we had to keypunch our programs onto a thick stack of cards and then feed them to huge computers. That was just to spit out a simple program like solving a basic math problem or a printing a few lines such as "hello and welcome to computer programming."
One time my daughter asked me what a piece of equipment was. Typewriter. She had never seen one.
maja 
now that i think about it...way back when...when i used a typewriter ...we had to change the ribbons every so often...i dont miss that a bit...or Wite Out...to cover mistakes
When I started college at Slippery Rock, they were very proud of their basement-filling IBM 360/70. At the time, we also had remote terminal access to it from various places in the Science Center, besides the main computer room of course. Heaven help you if you missed a key near the end of a command statement while creating a punch card - you tossed it into the paper recycling bin and started fresh with a new card.
At the time I studied Fortran and Basic, which were the two languages a Geology major needed at the time. Cobol was limited to the Business majors, unless you were actually studying for a Computer Science degree, or wanted to expand your horizons...
Oddly enough, I still have my "greenstripe" printout of a couple of programs I created and I'm pretty sure I also found the punch cards to run those same programs. Ah, the "good" old days. The average PC today has more computing power;-D
Phil D. Oldman. Wasn't that fun. And...also the correct strips to cover over typing mistakes. Looked like labels and you placed them over the typing to white the mistake out. Changing the ribbon was really fun..Those were the good ol days!
joyful...when we think about going green with recycling...these days...how many crumpled pages of term papers...must have been tossed...i threw away my share...
This makes me think of the "Tech Problems of today"
Today a noisy fan is a P1 issue and must be fixed NOW
Sometimes I want to send that sys admin or whoever that person reporting this back top the Punch Cards for a week. Then give him a weekend to regain his sanity. We'll see if he complains then....
Crazy- Oldman. Speaking of term papers brings to mind the exams that we used to have growing up in New York State. We used to have to take New York State Regent Exams. The kids today are so lucky they do not have that to look forward to at the end of their school year.
One of the first jobs I was fired from was janitor at IBM. I had stairwells 4-12; eight hours at night, never out of a stairwell :>(
They found me during break in the caculator room messing around with a "pocket caluculator" which was the size of a chest freezer. Think my ex-boss was upset that I could make it sing.
I took the Regents exams in math and science each year in high school (on Long Island.)
They were easy if one did the work throughout the year. Being nowhere near a genius, I never got below a 92 on them.
I went to HS in NY also. Remember getting a 98 on my bookeeping regents. I didn't know they have done away with them now. Do remember it was always so hot in our classrooms during those exams.
copygirl I worked on an IBM 029 before moving up to the ultra modern IBM 3742. I still have some 8" floppies somewhere.
I have a Christmas wreath made from punch cards. I hang it in the office every year.
Dolly has anyone ever heard an IBM...state of the art...circa...1979...platter hard drive disk fail...its worse than a dentist drill...
Does anyone have any punch cards 4-sale? My brother-in-law would love them as a Christmas gift.
Jake Jake - punched, unpunched, or doesn't it matter? I may still have some. How many are you looking for also?
I learned key punch in high school! The machine was huge! I don't remeber any of it now. I also took shorthand and don't remember any of it either. Thankfully I remember typing! It was all designed for the girls to prep them for secretary jobs. There were no boys in these classes. Except for typing I think. We even had a speaker come in to tell us how to dress and do our make up! Once I heard I was going to be "fetching" coffee and what not for the boss, I knew right then and there being a secretary was not in my future!
Jaemae I learned keypunch and shorthand in school also...Remember Pica or Elite typing..In my junior year of hs my keypunch teacher brought in this new revolutionary product that was going to change shopping at the grocery store....Bar codes were invented and being installed at a few stores, and she brought a sample in..No longer would the cashier ring things up manually anymore..amazing how far we have come...My first job was as a clerk-typist and I used shorthand and the dictaphone, which I can't even spell anymore, lol..
reedfamilyrocks Used a keypunch machine to build my JCL decks and COBOL programs at my first job. Moving up to a Green Screen was a big deal back then. Now my cell phone has more processing power than our old mainframe. How times have changed.
taxedtodeath Yes - I remember it well. And, yes, they were called "Hollerith" cards named after the inventor of one of the first tabulating machines. I was a programmer - started in the early 70's - Cobol, Fortran and IBM/360 Assembler Language. I also remember programming on paper tape...anyone recall that?? Thanks for the memories, oldman
hjc The last office I worked in had a GIANT "computer" room with about 25 girls lined up as keypunch operators. I worked as the payroll supervisor, so needed those cards daily. I remember opening up those doors (like entering a vault), and the noise level was unbelievable.
Also had the job of sending messages through a TELEX machine. Anyone remember those? You'd send a message, then have to save the long ticker tape as your back up. I used to love that damn thing. I really felt like I was stepping into the future with every message sent.
lola And punch cards were expensive! 2 to 2.5 cents each. A box of 2000 cost 40 to 50 dollars or even more if you had custom printing done on the card, as many companies had. In today's money that's close to 20 cents. Imagine if your email cost 20 cents per line - and if you made a spelling mistake you had to throw it away and use another card.
Verisimilidude 
Conrad's Mom NEVER heard of it or short hand.
I know last summer when working at an insurance company all the computers got a virus and a letter had to go out that day. So my boss tells me to use the typewriter....a typewriter really????
I couldn't even figure out how to turn the thing on my boss was cracking up. So he then turns it on and walks away. I then had to call him back because couldn't figure out how to lock the paper or whatever so it would stop moving. Then I made a typo and had to call him back again because I had no idea how to delete.....He couldn't stop laughing at me
Nosila 
I have a 029 and 129 keypunch machine that I've been trying to find somewhere to donate. I hate to just recycle the metal but no museums are interested. I'm in the Raleigh, North Carolina area.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
Jaz I am an ex-key punch operator and key-punch instructor. Worked at a lot of the utility companys. All of them used key- punch operarors. Key-punch cards had 80 columns.
You could punch alpha and numeric data into the cards.
I used the 029, 026, 129 models.
Are there any ex operators out there?
Joyce Ann Worked with punch cards. In 1968, the last year used where i worked, i worked with paper tape. For those that don't know that is a strip of paper that is perforated to create characters and records. The servos on the machines that read these tapes were not so good so they would snap the tape. To fix that we would have to splice the tape by joining the tapes and ironing (!!!!) a small strip. Punch cards were high tech :-)
OnTheEdge 
skippy Skippy - Jaz posted 3 1/2 years ago and was a random Google drop off post. (similar to Joyce in Las Vegas)
I'll check and see if my husband still has any cards. He may have kept some. We microfilmed large engineering drawings and mounted them in aperture cards. Punched the header so that we could duplicate multiple sets. It broke my heart to see the kepunch machines destroyed because we no longer had the space to store them. I also used punch cards when I first started working. Lots of fun memories (and not so fun memories when a stack of cards that made up a program got dropped)!
Hi Skippy!
I would love to have a stack of key-punch cards. I share info with a group. I would call this discussion, then and now.. It would blow the younger people away.
If anyone have any cards I would glady pay you for them and the shipping and handling charge. What a blast from the past.
I remember the print out paper. The paper was the like green and white striped paper with perforated edges. As stuff was printed, it would fall into a box and folded.
Boxes of old computer paper fetched money from paper recycling centers.
I used to got boxes of it from work, for a neighbor of mine. He lived on just recycling news papers, and computer paper; and metal scraps. Geeze.....he thought that computer paper was gold.
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