A machine or device used to punch holes in cards or tape to encode data, common in early computing and data entry.
Compound of 'data' and 'punch' (from Old French 'poinçon'). Became standard terminology during the era of punch cards in mid-20th century computing.
Before keyboards and screens, people used datapunches to create punch cards—each hole position represented a different letter or number, and millions of cards ran early computers.
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