Designer: Unknown

Item: Scoring Stencil Punch or Computer Card Hole Punch

Manufactured by: International Business Machines (IBM)

Country of origin: United States

Year made:  Ca. 1939

Materials:  Painted steel, aluminum and rubber

Dimensions: 2 ½” x 8” x 1 ¾”

Description:  This is an extremely rare surviving example of a hole punch used for computer cards when computers used a large volume of paper cards with holes punched for coding purposes.  This is an extraordinary example of streamlined modernist design whose designer is amazingly still unidentified.  Initial scholarship was unable to identify a reference to this in IBM’s archives.  According to the 2005 book American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow, which devotes an entire page to this object, it was dated 1945-50 by stylistic similarities with other IBM products from the time period.  However, subsequent research found and published in 2011 in A Modern World: American Design from the Yale University Art Gallery 1920-1950, also with a full page devoted this item, shows a promotional photograph of the item in use in 1939.  The outstanding modernist machine age design is also found on the rubber underside, which identifies the item as being produced by IBM.  Examples can be found in the museum collections of the Yale University Art Gallery and the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. 

Condition:  Excellent for its age.  Rubber is still remarkably supple for its age.

References:  Hanks, David A., Hoy, Anne, American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow, Flammarion, 2005; Stewart, John, A Modern World: American Design from the Yale University Art Gallery 1920 – 1950, Yale University Press, 2011