As we glide our fingers over the screens of our smartphones and tablets, or chatter to our computer instead of typing at it, it is easy to forget how far input devices have evolved since the first ...

(1) See loyalty punch card. (2) An early storage medium made of thin cardboard stock that held data as patterns of punched holes. Also called "punched" cards, each of the 80 or 96 columns held one ...

Punch card data input is so 1890 US Census, right? Maybe not, if your goal is to educate kids about binary numbers and how they can encode characters. In which case, this paper clip and metal tape ...