Thanks to Scott Hollows, a fellow collector from Australia for visiting the Digibarn in 2007 and sending the below punchcard printing plate, made for a gas utility company with a custom layout - not the generic 80 column plate. Wikipedia's entry for Punched Card describes printing plates as follows:
Punched Card Manufacturing
IBM's Fred M. Carroll developed a series of rotary type presses that were used to produce the well-known standard tabulating cards, including a 1921 model that operated at 400 cards per minute (cpm). Later, he developed completely different press capable of operating at speeds in excess of 800 cpm, and it was introduced in 1936. Carroll's high-speed press, containing a printing cylinder, revolutionized the manufacture of punched tabulating cards. It is estimated that between 1930 and 1950, the Carroll press accounted for as much as 25 per cent of the company's profits. Discarded printing plates from these card presses, each printing plate the size of an IBM card and formed into a cylinder, often found use as desk pen/pencil holders, and even today are collectable IBM artifacts (every card layout had its own printing plate).
Another Punchcard Printing Plate (from IBM)
Below find photos of another example of such a plate sent to us by Scott Hollows.
See Also:
Punched Cards A brief illustrated technical history
by Douglas W. Jones Univ of Iowa Dept of Computer Science
Wikipedia's entry for Punched Card, which describes printing plates
as used in punched card manufacturing
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