Hollerith computer card punch by ICT Ltd, c1960, with associated archive material. Now wired as a copier with brushes to magnets. Card numbering device added.

Electro-mechanical punched card machines were used for data processing from the late 19th century before developments in electronic computers eventually made them obsolete. Holes were punched onto standard sized cards to represent data, which were fed into punched card machinery that sorted them and tabulated the information they carried. There were several different types of punched card machine. Card punches like this were used to actually create punched cards for processing in other machines.

When electronic computers were developed in mid-20th century, punched card machines were used for data input and output. This particular machine was used in the English Electric (later British Areospace) wind tunnels at Warton in Lancashire, where experimental data from wind tunnel tests could be punched straight onto cards ready for processing by a computer. International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) was established in 1959 after the merger of two earlier companies, Power Samas and British Tabulating Machine (BTM). In the early 20th century BTM had license manufactured American punched card machinery developed by inventor Herman Hollerith and many of its machines, like this one, continued to carry the name Hollerith. The machine was probably made at one of BTM's factories in Letchworth or Castlereagh.