The Lowly Punched Card

15 Points Per Correct Answer - No time limit  

1. For what was the stiff format punched card first used? Controlling French weaving looms (early 18th century) Control Charles Babbage's mechanical calculator (early 19th century) Playing tunes on American fairground organs (19th century) In China to control water clocks (325 A.D.)

2. The modern punched card (now pretty much obsolete), similar to what became the mainstay of computing input, was developed in 1890. What was it developed to support? Record data for the US Census Record data for the Library of Congress Record data about soldiers in the Boer War Record data for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

3. What was the name of the company whose focus was punched card driven data that Herman Hollerith formed in 1896 that through a series of mergers emerged as International Business Machines (IBM)? Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR) Tabulating Machine Company International Time Recording Company Computing Scale Corporation

4. All computers use/used the same size and format of punched cards. True False

5. The punched card was so prevalent by the middle of the 20th century that we still quote a warning which appeared on many of the distributed cards came with the following warning: "Do not fold, _______ or mutilate" desecrate destroy crease spindle

6. It was possible to punch out all the positions on an IBM 80 column card. Putting 12 rows of 80 columns of rectangular holes in a card 7 3/8" x 3 1/4" left a very flimsy "novelty" card that was not capable of passing through a card reader. What were these cards commonly called? lace cards labyrinth cards holy cards confetti cards

7. The holes in cards might be round (as the ones in the 1890 Census cards were), oval, or rectangular. What were the bits of paper that were punched out called? confetti chippings punch-outs chips, chad, or chads

8. The IBM card format with 80 columns and 12 rows was used with IBM mainframe computers since mid-1960s to encode data in which format? ASCII QWERTY keyboard emulation 960 Matrix Coding (12 x 80) EBCDIC

9. Although not technically punched, there were punched cards that allowed data entry by using a special electrographic pencil to shade designated ovals on the card. Special card reader sensed these markings and were programmed to punch out additional holes in the cards based on the shadings which could then be process by traditional unit record equipment. What were these cards called? Write-on cards Data entry cards Mark sense cards Mark-up cards

10. Some events during the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election brought negative publicity to the use of punched cards as a voting medium. This was associated with the use of Votomatic type machines in which state? Texas California Mississippi Florida