Herman Hollerith is the inventor of the punched card. A punched card or punch card is a piece of stiff paper that can be used to contain digital informationrepresented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. The information might be data for data processing applications or, in earlier examples,used to directly control automated machinery. The terms IBM card, or Hollerith card specifically refer to punched cards used in semiautomatic data processing.