Punch Card Generator

A standard punch card has 80 columns and 12 punch rows: two "zone" rows at the top (12 and 11), then rows 0 through 9. Each character is a combination of holes in one column, as punched by the IBM 029 keypunch:

• Digits 0–9 — a single punch in the matching row
• A–I — zone punch 12 + digit rows 1–9 (so H = 12 + 8)
• J–R — zone punch 11 + digit rows 1–9
• S–Z — zone punch 0 + digit rows 2–9
• Punctuation — multi-punch combinations, mostly involving row 8 (a period is 12-8-3, a comma is 0-8-3, a dollar sign is 11-8-3...)
• Space — no punch at all; the most economical character

The printing along the top row is the card's "interpretation": keypunches typed the character above each column so humans could read the deck without decoding holes. One card held one line of code, which is why a serious program was measured in boxes, and why dropping a tray of cards was a career event.

The clipped corner is real too: it let operators spot a card that was upside down or backwards in a deck of thousands. Download renders the card at 2× resolution.

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