History of Computers - Punch Card Programming

Punch-cards were one of the first standardized mediums of writing programs. Although the languages would differ from place to place and from time period to time period,the punch card quickly became practically universal, especially with IBM computers. In normal circumstances, these punch cards would encode somewhere around 80 characters of data. Once a program was written, it could be used and reused.

Overview

A punch card

Punched cards were an early form of input into a computer. A standard punch card would have around 80 columns, which would be punched by a machine appropriately dubbed the keypunch. As stated beforehand, this method of entering programs was rather cumbersome. "It was easy to make typos and spotting errors was difficult" . Nevertheless, this innovation made it possible to perform significantly more complex computations. Punch cards became all but universal when IBM began widespread production of computers that featured compatibility with punch cards. This foresight by IBM caused the flourishing of programming, which still hasn't ceased today. Although the use of punch cards was universal, the programming languages were not. From Plankalkül to FONTRAN, this method of programming was ubiquitous until different methods of storing data became available.

Origins

When Herman Hollerith was assigned the task of keeping track of the US census, he soon became frustrated with the tedious and error-prone method of record keeping. Using an idea that had been explored by the Jacquard Loom (its namesake being inventor Joseph Jacquard), Hollerith decided to create the electronic tabulating machine that could record data when fed punched cards. This expedited the process of creating a census by at least 7 years. The success of Hollerith catapulted him to the forefront of computing technology. In 1906, Hollerith made the first leap towards programming with his invention, the type I tabulator, which could perform many different operations without being rebuilt.

Plankalkül

One of the first programming languages, Plankalkül was developed by German computer scientist Konrad Zuse. Although the language never was implemented into anything practical, Zuse's language uses many of the standards that makes up those of today .

FORTRAN

Short for Formula Translator, FORTRAN was one, if not the first, of the earliest widely-implemented programming languages. Developed by IBM at their San Jose campus by John Backus, FORTRAN was used primarily for engineering applications. Ever since its invention in 1955, Fortran dominated its particular niche of programming. It is also rather significant in the way that it was the first successful High Level Language (HLL).

LISP

Short for List Processor, LISP gained popularity as one of the forefront programming languages for studies of Artificial intelligence. LISP's code and data are interchangeable, a hallmark of LISP in particular. This leads to syntax for the language to be rather distinctive. This language was developed by John McCarthy of MIT.

Significance

The medium of punch cards produced a large boom in the study of computer sciences. The versatility that these different languages allowed for revolutionized what computers were capable of. Although punch cards are now considered widely obsolete, they proved extremely useful for their time period. With the algorithms produced by different kinds of programs, man was able to make it to the moon, split the atom, and a variety of other significant inventions as a result of the accuracy and speed of computing thanks to these programming languages.

Links

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/languages/fortran/ch1-1.html

References

[1] One man's experience programming with punch cards [2] Herman Hollerith bio [3] Study of Plankalkül