A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates is a 1955 compilation of random numbers created by the RAND Corporation and published by the Free Press. Demand for large volumes of random digits
Title page of the 1955 edition
Data for the table was initially stored on punch cards.
Punched card
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A punched card is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 19th to 20th centuries, punched cards we
A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates
…were converted to decimal. Numbers above 20 were discarded, while any two-digit numbers had their first digit removed. These were then printed onto punch cards as strings of random digits, and converted into data tables by an IBM Cardatype, a data-processing computer. At least 20,000 punch cards were needed…
Carpet loom with Jacquard apparatus by Carl Engel, around 1860. The chain feed is on the left.
A worker changing Jacquard cards in a lace machine, September 1918. The pattern of the lace is dictated by the holes in the cards.
Woman operating the card puncher, c. 1940