IBM Type 016 Electric Duplicating Key Punch

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Photo from Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1928

The IBM Type 016 Motor-Driven Electric Duplicating Key Punch, introduced in some time between 1927 and 1929, the kind used in Columbia's Statistical and Astronomical Laboratories, and later in Watson Scientific Laboratory. This was IBM's first punch with automatic feeding and ejecting mechanisms; it was marketed until 1960. The punching is done magnetically, and information from one card can be transferred automatically to another by a duplicator. The keyboard contains 12 punching keys, one for each row on the card. There are also space and eject keys. A master (program) card can be used to control automatic tabbing and duplication of fields. A skilled operator could punch 100-200 cards per hour on this model. Herb Grosch recalls, "You put a stack of blank cards in the feed [right], a single card, part of which you wanted to duplicate ('master card'), in the to-and-fro rack, and clipped a skip bar to the front of the carriage (p.82). A notch said skip, a deeper notch said copy."

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Page created: 2001; Most recent update: Mon Mar 6 13:47:03 2023

Frank da Cruz / fdc@columbia.edu / Columbia University Computing History