Well, my latest acquisition finally arrived from England (why are all the good
things in Europe...). Anyways, I finally have a Hollerith Manual Card
Punch. You can see a picture of one at the Computer Museum of America
web site:
http://www.computer-museum.org/collections/hollerith.html
Mine was made in england, by International Computers and Tabulators Limited.
Does anyone know if that company was a part of what became IBM, or did
they just make an unauthorized copy of the machine?
My punch is slightly different that the one at that web site, in that it
never had a nameplate below the keys, and the uppermost button on the picture
isnt a part of my card punch. Basically, you have the 12 keys that punch the
12 hole positions and advance the card one row, with a button to inhibit the
advance so you can multi-punch the same row (or allows skipping a row), and a
second button that releases the remainer of the card. The button that is
missing in the design of the punch I have must not have been very useful, as
I cant imagine what else a person would need to do.
There is an adjustable card stop, so that you can set the punch to allow you
to skip any number of initial columns on each card automatically. The chad
just drops to the ground underneath the punch.
If I can find some information about this punch, i'll make a nice web page
about it.
-Lawrence LeMay
Received on Thu Feb 14 2002 - 12:53:44 GMT