Keypunch

Keypunching is a way of putting information onto a piece of paper or a card by punching little holes in it. Think about your art project where you punch little shapes out of paper, but on a bigger scale. To do this, you use a machine called a keypunch. It looks like a typewriter, but instead of making letters appear on paper, it punches little holes in it.

For example, say you want to make a card that says "Hello, my name is ELI5". You would use the keypunch to punch a little hole for each letter in each word, and also for the spaces in between the words. When someone wants to read the information you punched, they use another machine called a card reader that reads the holes and turns them back into words.

Keypunching was used in the past because it was an easy way to store lots of information on little cards or paper. Even though we have more advanced technology now that allows us to store information in other ways like computers, keypunching is still sometimes used. It can be useful for things like voting cards or forms that need to be filled out by hand.