Punch-Card Equipment

(or punched-card equipment). Two terms have been used in Russian for equipment involved in the processing of data recorded on punch cards: schetno-perforatsionnye mashiny and perforatsionnye mashiny.

The term schetno-perforatsionnye mashiny is obsolete. Two groups of machines were distinguished under this heading: (1) equipment for the preparation and preliminary processing of punch cards, such as punches, verifiers, reproducers, sorters, collators, and interpreters; and (2) equipment for the computational processing of the information on punch cards, such as tabulators and calculating punches.

With the development of electronic computers, the term schetno-perforatsionnye mashiny was supplanted by the term perforatsionnye mashiny, which is the collective name for the equipment in a punch-card computer or processing system.