What is a Perforated Card for, What are the Formats and What Types Are There?

Since punch cards were created they have been very useful, the greatest feature of these cards is its speed to save data. Previously, information, whether confidential or public, took a long time to reach its addressee, to a certain extent, this affected everyone’s routine of life.

The first people to put their trust in punch cards were the Americans, which shows that they were able to store secret data. A few years later, it got better the security and performance of these cards until the public began to become more familiar with them.

What are punch cards and why are they still used today?

A punch card is a card stock that contains a series of two-unit system and this allows you to have two types of data reload. If any of the two questions was correct, a hole was made in the correct question, after doing this such cards were soaked in mercury. Above the cardboard there was a kind of cables looking for the holes that the cardboard had, when they found them adequate information was recorded on top of the mercury.

These types of punch cards are no longer used today, as there are other ways to record and send information. There are text messages, also the 4G LTE internet signal and other methods to spread or save information. But mainly who replaced the work of perforated plates they were external storage disks, such as CD disks, SD and USB memories and large storage hard disks.

Keep in mind that CDs can store audio as well as record custom audio, SD memories can store photos, and hard drives can store all kinds of files. With these different storage methods Information can even be backed up to a hard drive inside a computer.

However, there is a problem about these data storage devices, and it is said that storage disks do not compare to mercury sheets with voids.

Characteristics of perforated mercury sheets

The response system of this class of cards only consisted of two, the cards in their capacity contained columns with boxes that could store data. At the beginning of the punched mercury card industry these were simple, but as time passed companies began to manufacture them in different sizes, of different thickness.

When the mercury plates needed to be pierced exclusive pencils were used for engraving, such pencils could not be used by hand as well as common graphite pencils. They were placed inside a machine and if the card was not one that was specifically designed for the machine, it was not able to read it.

Types of punched cards: The first mercury punched card

At the beginning the first that existed and that began to be used were the cards manufactured by Hollerith, the Hollerith cards were very good and since these were launched they caught the attention of all the people. This card was created in 1890 and was used massively in the census of the United States country, with these punched cards more than two 62 million individuals were registered.

The measurements of such cards were 9 X 21, 5 CM, the perforation of them was made in circles, they had at least 20 columns. This amount of space was more than enough so to some extent people worked very well. Later the size of the cards was increased, reaching 45 columns. In what storage disks resemble forgiving cards is in their great availability for storing data.

Data backup: punch cards vs hard drives

To a certain extent it can be said that hard drives, SD memories and USB better support information. Because, even if it is erased, it can still be recovered by downloading a program like recuva, but instead once the punched cards are damaged there is no solution.