Punch Cards Used as an Advertisement, IBM 148331

IBM sometimes used punch cards to advertise punch card systems. This is one such punch card, used to advertise tabulating machines. Text on the card reads in part: What the Punched Hole will do. (/) The IBM card demonstrates the first step (/) in IBM accounting. The three leftmost columns indicate how the digits 005 would be entered using slanting, oval-shaped holes. Three columns next to this indicate how the digits 005 would be entered in an 80-column card with rectangular holes such as IBM had introduced in the 1920s. The center of the card described what the card would do. The right side indicates data from a payroll calculation printed on an 80-column card.

Test along the left edge of the card reads: IBM 792040-MS 0. It also reads: IBM 148331. Text along the right edge reads: REPRESENTATIVE COMPANY.

The back of the card shows an IBM "punch register", a sorter, and an accounting machine, which "PREPARES THE REQUIRED REPORTS FROM THE PUNCHED AND SORTED CARDS."

For another example of the card, see 1988.0803.01.

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