A punched card or punch card is a piece of stiff paper that can be used to contain digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Digital data can be used for data processing applications or, in earlier examples, used to directly control automated machinery. Punched cards were used through much of the 20th century in the data processing industry, where specialized and complex unit record machines, organized into semiautomatic data processing systems, used punched cards for data input and storage; the IBM 12-row/80-column punched card format came to dominate the industry. Many early digital computers used punched cards as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data. While punched cards are now obsolete as a storage medium, as of 2012, some voting machines still use punched cards to record votes. Basile Bouchon developed the control of a loom by punched holes in paper tape in 1725; the design was improved by Jacques Vaucanson. Although these improvements controlled the patterns woven, they still required an assistant to operate the mechanism.

In 1804 Joseph Marie Jacquard demonstrated a mechanism to automate loom operation. A number of punched cards were linked into a chain of any length; each card held the instructions for selecting the shuttle for a single pass. It is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware. Semyon Korsakov was reputedly the first to propose punched cards in informatics for information store and search. Korsakov announced his new method and machines in September 1832. Charles Babbage proposed the use of "Number Cards", "pierced with certain holes and stand opposite levers connected with a set of figure wheels... advanced they push in those levers opposite to which there are no holes on the cards and thus transfer that number together with its sign" in his description of the Calculating Engine's Store. In 1881 Jules Carpentier developed a method of recording and playing back performances on a harmonium using punched cards; the system was called the Mélographe Répétiteur and “writes down ordinary music played on the keyboard dans la langage de Jacquard”, as holes punched in a series of cards.

By 1887 Carpentier had separated the mechanism into the Melograph which recorded the player's key presses and the Melotrope which played the music. At the end of the 1800s Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a medium that could be read by a machine. "After some initial trials with paper tape, he settled on punched cards...", developing punched card data processing technology for the 1890 US census. His tabulating machines read and summarized data stored on punched cards and they began use for government and commercial data processing; these electromechanical machines only counted holes, but by the 1920s they had units for carrying out basic arithmetic operations. Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company, one of four companies that were amalgamated to form a fifth company, Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company renamed International Business Machines Corporation. Other companies entering the punched card business included The Tabulator Limited, Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen Gesellschaft mbH, Powers Accounting Machine Company, Remington Rand, H.

W. Egli Bull; these companies, others and marketed a variety of punched cards and unit record machines for creating and tabulating punched cards after the development of electronic computers in the 1950s. Both IBM and Remington Rand tied punched card purchases to machine leases, a violation of the 1914 Clayton Antitrust Act. In 1932, the US government took both to court on this issue. Remington Rand settled quickly. IBM viewed its business as providing a service. IBM fought all the way to the Supreme Court and lost in 1936. IBM had 32 presses at work in Endicott, N. Y. printing and stacking five to 10 million punched cards every day." Punched cards were used as legal documents, such as U. S. Government checks and savings bonds. During World War II punched card equipment was used by the Allies in some of their efforts to decrypt Axis communications. See, for example, Central Bureau in Australia. At Bletchley Park in England, "some 2 million punched cards a week were being produced, indicating the sheer scale of this part of the operation".

Punched card technology developed into a powerful tool for business data-processing. By 1950 punched cards had become ubiquitous in government. "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate," a generalized version of the warning that appeared on some punched cards, became a motto for the post-World War II era. In 1955 IBM signed a consent decree requiring, amongst other things, that IBM would by 1962 have no more than one-half of the punched card manufacturing capacity in the United States. Tom Watson Jr.'s decision to sign this decree, where IBM saw the punched card provisions as the most significant point, completed the transfer of power to him from Thomas Watson, Sr. The UNITYPER introduced magnetic tape for data entry in the 1950s. During the 1960s, the punched card was replaced as the primary means for data storage by magnetic tape, as better, more capable computers became available. Mohawk D

Marguerita Maria "Mady" Christians was an Austrian actress and naturalized US citizen who had a successful acting career in theatre and film in the United States until she was blacklisted during the McCarthy period. She was born on January 19, 1892 to Rudolph Christians, a well-known German actor, his wife, Bertha, her family moved to Berlin when she was one year old, to New York City in 1912, where her father became the Irving Place Theatre's general manager. Five years she returned to Europe to study under Max Reinhardt, she appeared in a number of European films prior to the early 1930s. In 1929, she starred. In 1933, she toured the United States in a play called Marching By and was offered a Broadway contract the following year that allowed her, like a number of other German artists, to seek refuge from the Nazi regime in the United States. On Broadway, Christians played Queen Gertrude in Hamlet and Lady Percy in Henry IV, Part I, staged by director Margaret Webster. Webster was part of a small but influential group of lesbian producers and actors in theater.

Webster and Christians became close friends: according to Webster biographer Milly S. Barranger, it is that they were lovers, she starred in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine. She originated, her last movie roles were in All My Sons, based on the play by Arthur Miller, Letter from an Unknown Woman, both released in 1948. During World War II, Christians was involved in political work on behalf of refugees, rights for workers, Russian War relief, political efforts that would bring her to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other anti-communist institutions and organizations. In addition to her political work, Christians publicly criticized the House Committee on Un-American Activities in early 1941 and likened the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee's investigation of propaganda in US film to Nazi harassment of film and radio artists in the 1930s. In 1950, the FBI's internal security division began investigating Christians, identified as a "concealed communist" by a confidential informant.

When Christians' name appeared in Red Channels, the so-called bible of the broadcast blacklist, her career was over. On October 28, 1951, aged 59, Christians died of a stroke, which some attributed to the stress of being subjected to FBI surveillance and being blacklisted. Mady Christians on IMDb Mady Christians at Find a Grave Profile Virtual-History.com. I Dare Say — Variety Spice of Life for Actress

Elchin Alibeyli is a television figure, television critic, Active member of the International Academy of Television and Radio. He received his PHD in art criticism. Elchin Alibeyli was born on December 1978 in the city of Yerevan. In 1996 he entered the Azerbaijan State University of Arts. In 2002 he graduated from with honors as a master's degree. In 2002-2005 he studied at the Institute of Architecture and Art of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences as a post graduate student. Editor-in-chief of "Virtuoze" and "Corifey" production in 1995-1998, Executive Editor at SOY TV in 1998-2005, General Director at CNF Production in 2005-2007. In 2007-2011 he was Artistic Director of Azad Azerbaijan Teleradio Broadcasting Company. In 2011-2012 he was appointed General Director of the "Azerbaijan carpets" scientific-art magazine. In 2012-2013 and 2016-2017 he worked as Director General of Publika.az portal. He leads the Azerbaijan Media Academy, he is a full member of the International Academy of Radio, PhD in Art Studies.

He is the author of books on creative searches of TV channels that exist in Azerbaijan, TV's public functions and their imagination. Numerous articles have been published the article and scientific journals as well as in the periodical press, he is best known with a television presenter and broadcaster, film maker, producer. Gunchin Alibeyli, Oder Alibeyli, Alper Alibeyli. Elçin Əlibəylinin “Master və Marqarita”sı - Yazıçılar oxucu kimi Tibb mərkəzləri ATV kanalından təkzib gözləyir “Məşhur tələbə yoldaşım”: “Elçin Əlibəyli məni mədəniyyət naziri təyin etmişdi” - RUBRİKA. 04.08.2014