A punched card, is a piece of stiff paper that contained either commands for controlling automated machinery or data for data processing applications. Both commands and data were represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions.
Punch cards are known to be used as early as 1725 for controlling textile looms. The cards were later used to store and search for information in 1832 by Semen Korsakov. Later in 1890, Herman Hollerith developed a method for machines to record and store information on punch cards to be used for the US census.
Punch cards were the primary method of storing and retrieving data in the early 1900s, however, began being replaced by other methods in the 1960s and today are rarely found or used with computer storage.