Chad (paper) device which will not punch a complete circle in the tape but, instead, will only cut approximately three-quarters of the circumference of a circle ... thereby leaving a movable, or hinged, lid of paper in the tape." In the "New Hacker's Dictionary", two unattributed and likely humorous derivations for "chad" are offered, a back-formation from a personal name "Chadless" and an acronym for "Card Hole Aggregate Debris". Other etymologies claim derivation from the Scottish name for river gravel, "chad", or the British slang for louse, "chat". When a chad is not fully detached, it is described by various terms corresponding
Punched card scored IBM punched cards. Designed to fit in the pocket, Port-A-Punch made it possible to create punched card documents anywhere. The product was intended for "on-the-spot" recording operations—such as physical inventories, job tickets and statistical surveys—because it eliminated the need for preliminary writing or typing of source documents." In the late 1960s, IBM introduced a new, smaller, round-hole, 96-column card format along with the IBM System/3 computer. These cards have tiny (1 mm), circular holes, smaller than those in paper tape. Data is stored in 6-bit BCD, with three rows of 32 characters each, or 8-bit EBCDIC. In this format,