Post #4158085
2026-07-28 07:58 UTC
What you’re describing sounds very weird because punchcards are mechanical media and colored cellophane would be optical. We didn’t have any popular optical media until CDs. I think using optical media to store the extremely limited amount of data something like punchcard can store makes no sense.
Replies (1)
-
@Nouvellalia@lemmy.world 2026-07-28 16:54
It only really made sense as a way to give slides meant for human viewing, computerized data for sorting, filling, or otherwise using simultaneously with the slide. Like, a picture of an engineering diagram, patent, survey site, military target, etc. Before we could store a picture as raw binary data, this was an interesting way to fill the need to digitally notate images. Punch cards like this were definitely in use for a while. I have a post above with an image.