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Into The Bit Bucket With Thee
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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Related question for old data media enjoyers: I have extremely vague memories of a computer I used as a kid that had a punchcard like system where the holes had colored cellophane or something in them, presumably to add a few more bits of data per hole. I think the cards were probably some sort of plastic or maybe laminated paper? Has anyone heard of something like this?
I've seen punch cards where the optical media meant to be illuminated and projected for people to see, was accompanied by punched information for a computer to read. They were both on the same punch card. I want to say the USGS, the patent office, the army, and maybe Bell systems used these at some points?
I think this may be what you remember? I've never seen one where the holes carried a few extra bits of color information though. I do not think that existed on an industrial scale. Was it in a niche children's toy?
Edit: found an image of the ones I was referring to
Nice, but it wasn’t a viewmaster. Similar idea, but it was an actual computer of some sort.
What you're describing sounds very weird because punchcards are mechanical media and colored cellophane would be optical. We didn't have any popular optical media until CDs. I think using optical media to store the extremely limited amount of data something like punchcard can store makes no sense.
It only really made sense as a way to give slides meant for human viewing, computerized data for sorting, filling, or otherwise using simultaneously with the slide. Like, a picture of an engineering diagram, patent, survey site, military target, etc.
Before we could store a picture as raw binary data, this was an interesting way to fill the need to digitally notate images. Punch cards like this were definitely in use for a while. I have a post above with an image.