Punched-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880–1945
Lars Heide · Johns Hopkins University Press eBooks · 2009
Similarly, France used a military mobilization register made up of punched cards to bolster its government after capitulation to the invading Germans in the summer of 1940.The armistice had divided the country: three-fi fths came under direct German military rule, while Philippe Pétain was to govern the remainder from the city of Vichy-the area known as Vichy France.Pétain was an aging hero from the First World War, and his autocratic regime was not content with the army of only a hundred thousand men permitted by the armistice, a fi gure determined by the Germans to minimize the threat of this potential opponent.Shortly after the defeat, the Vichy regime quietly started to prepare Ida Fuller, of Ludlow, Vermont, receives a Social Security benefi t check in 1950 in the shape of a punched card.The message is that the Social Security cares for the individual and the punched card's role is underlined by turning its printed side toward us.The side facing the two individuals is blank.(Social Security Administration, Baltimore, Maryland)a pay slip based upon the number of work hours and the hourly rates.Punched cards and their corresponding machinery were improved to meet these growing needs.Alongside these developments in the United States, punched cards spread to Europe.European companies adapted the original American technology and developed their own information systems and technologies; some of these were based on standards and basic patents from the United States, while others applied different ideas and principles.Though the European companies remained smaller than their American competitors or parent companies, they contributed signifi cantly to the shaping of punched-card technology.The ways in which the punched-card business developed in the various European countries echoed differences in their technological cultures, business structures, and roles of government.The outcome was various nationally shaped machines with emphasis on different aspects of the technology.In the 1930s, the scope of punched-card applications started to expand from business statistics and bookkeeping to include record management.Until then, punched cards had been a data-processing tool to be discarded once the process was completed.Punched cards became a storage medium.Several insurance companies, public utilities, and other businesses introduced registers of customers and wage earners in their punched-card-based bookkeeping systems.Various national governments adopted and developed this concept to make record-keeping the core of the system.The ability to mobilize people proved essential in the interwar years.Roosevelt, Hitler and, later, Churchill accomplished this through their radio broadcasts.Building up large punched-card registers provided a supplemental, more tangible way to mobilize people.Punched cards were less charismatic than the nations' leaders, but, for the fi rst time, they offered the nation an effi cient technology, allowing direct access to the individual citizen.The major register projects in the United States, France, and Germany exemplifi ed this.Through these and other large registers, punched cards came to contribute signifi cantly to the shaping of modern societies.The press release photograph of an elderly lady receiving her pension check from the Social Security Administration in 1950 illustrated how the state cared for the well-being of each citizen.But these registers could also represent a threat, as with the possibility