IBM Card Interpreters

An interpreter adds printing to punched but otherwise blank cards, based on what's punched on each card. Most were not capable of reading or interpreting all 80 columns of a card. Thus the desired fields had to be selected by wiring the control panel appropriately. In any case, the printing characters were wider than the card columns, and did not line up. The 551 and 552 models, by allowing more than one row to be printed, also allowed interpretation of all 80 card columns by running the cards through twice with different column and row selections. The 551 requires one pass for each of up to 5 rows that is to be printed. The printing row is selected by a knob, shown below. On the 557, up to 25 rows can be printed in a single pass. The print mechanism is a type bar; this is not dot-matrix printing as on the key punch, which differs from the printing on interpreted cards with its 1-to-1 correspondence with the card columns.

CLICK ON ANY IMAGE to enlarge.

Here's a table summarizing what I can find out about different IBM interpreter models:

Type	Name	Introduced	Repertoire	Columns	Rows	Feed	Stacker	Speed
541
542
550	Automatic Interpreter	1930	Numeric	45	1	800	1000	75
551	Check Writing Interpreter	1946	Alphanumeric	45	5			60
552	Alphabetical Interpreter	1946	Alphanumeric	60	2			60
557	Alphabetic Interpreter	1954	Alphanumeric	60	25	800	900	100
548	Interpreter	1958	Alphanumeric	60	2	700	900	60

*Legend:*
Columns:	How many card columns can be interpreted in one pass.
Rows:	On how many different rows can printing be done?
Feed:	How many cards can go in the card (input) feed.
Stacker:	How many cards can go in the (output) stacker.
Speed:	Throughput, cards per minute.

The 551 or its successors (if any) is/are known to millions of people who received US government or other checks printed on IBM cards or punched-card bills from public utitilities up until the not-too-distant past. Special features of the 551 included regular plus double-width type (e.g. to emphasize the amount of a check) and automatic asterisk fill (to prevent additional digits from being added after the fact), as shown in the following sample check:

The United States government used interpreted punched cards for checks (social security, tax refunds, veteran benefits, payments to contractors, etc) from about 1945 until 1985, when IBM stopped making punch cards. After that, computer-printed paper checks were sent and gradually these were phased out in favor of electronic payment[4].

References:

IBM Card Interpreters, Types 550, 551, and 552 - Principles of Operation, Form 22-3178-3 (Copyright 1946, 3rd Edition: May 1954). All photos except the 557 are from this manual.
IBM 548,552 Interpreters - Manual of Operation, IBM Data Processing Division, 112 East Post Road, White Plains, New York, Form 224-6384-2 (Copyright 1946, 1958)
IBM 557 Alphabetic Interpreter Reference Manual (Copyright 1954, 1958, 1959).
Clyde H. Farnsworth, A New Look for U.S. Checks, New York Times, 12 May 1984.

Also see:

Tabulators, Sorters, Key Punches, Collators, Reproducers, Calculators.

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