Definition
A punched card is an information carrier made of cardboard or stiff paper on which data are encoded by the presence or absence of holes at defined positions. In the textile industry, the punched card was shaped above all by Joseph-Marie Jacquard, who around 1804/1805 developed a control system for looms in which perforated cards governed the lifting motion of individual warp threads. This principle allowed complex woven fabric patterns to be reproduced without manual intervention by the weaver during the weaving process. The punched card is regarded as an early example of programmable machine control and later influenced the development of mechanical data processing.
Use in the textile industry
In weaving, punched cards were used in Jacquard machines to control the selection and lifting motion of individual warp threads for each weft pick, automating the production of patterned woven fabrics such as damask, brocade, and figured fabrics. Depending on pattern complexity, cards could be joined into endless chains, allowing repeats to be reproduced any number of times. Analogous punched-card systems were also used in knitting and embroidery to store pattern programs in machine-readable form and retrieve them reproducibly.
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