The IBM 711 was a

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...

reader used as a peripheral device for IBM mainframe vacuum tube computers and early transistorized computers. Announced on May 21, 1952, it was first shipped with the IBM 701. Later IBM computers that used it were the IBM 704, the

IBM 709 The IBM 709 was a computer system, initially announced by IBM in January 1957 and first installed during August 1958. The 709 was an improved version of its predecessor, the IBM 704, and was the third of the IBM 700/7000 series of scientific co ...

, and the transistorized IBM 7090 and 7094.

Overview

The 711's read mechanism was based on the

IBM 402 The IBM 402 and IBM 403 Accounting Machines were tabulating machines introduced by International Business Machines in the late 1940s. Overview The 402 could read punched cards at a speed of 80 to 150 cards per minute, depending on process op ...

's and could read 150 cards per minute (250 cards per minute on the IBM 7090). It included a control panel that could be wired to transfer any 72 columns out of the 80 on a card into the computer's memory, though in practice the panel was almost always wired to read the first 72 columns. Cards were read in binary format. Data from each row was read into two 36-bit words, starting with row 9, for a total of 24 words per card. Computer object code could then be executed directly. Conversion to characters or numbers was done in software. The 72 column restriction influenced early computer languages, such as Fortran and Cobol, which only allowed source code in the first 72 columns of each punched card. The 711 was relatively slow and magnetic tape was much faster, so it was common for 7000 series installations to include an

IBM 1401 The IBM 1401 is a variable-wordlength decimal computer that was announced by IBM on October 5, 1959. The first member of the highly successful IBM 1400 series, it was aimed at replacing unit record equipment for processing data stored on pu ...

, with its high speed peripherals, to do card-to-tape and tape-to-line-printer operations off-line, with the 711 mainly used for

initial program load In computing, booting is the process of starting a computer as initiated via hardware such as a button or by a software command. After it is switched on, a computer's central processing unit (CPU) has no software in its main memory, so so ...

of operating systems and diagnostics. Variants of the 711, the IBM 712 and the IBM 714 were used with the

IBM 702 The IBM 702 was an early generation tube-based digital computer produced by IBM in the early to mid-1950s. It was the company's response to Remington Rand's UNIVAC—the first mainframe computer to use magnetic tapes. As these machines ...

and

IBM 705 The IBM 700/7000 series is a series of large-scale (mainframe) computer systems that were made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series includes several different, incompatible processor architectures. The 700s use vacuum-tube lo ...

computers.IBM 714 at Computer History Museum
/ref>

In the media

*An IBM 711 is shown reading cards as part of an IBM 7090 installation in the 2016 American biographical film ''

Hidden Figures ''Hidden Figures'' is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder. It is loosely based on the 2016 non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly about African Ame ...

.''

References

{{reflist IBM 700/7000 series Card reader (punched cards) 711

Overview

In the media

See also

References