Later cards had more columns, but those never really caught on to the same scale as the classic 80-column card. To punch a number on the card, a machine made a hole in one of the bottom 10 columns.

But wait, the school acquired a dozen of the TRS-80 computers seen in the lower left. They were meant to be used when teaching BASIC, but [HPF] hatched a plan to put them to task for punch card ...

(1) See loyalty punch card. (2) An early storage medium made of thin cardboard stock that held data as patterns of punched holes. Also called "punched" cards, each of the 80 or 96 columns held one ...