1935

Zurich

United Arab Emirates

The punch card and machines built around this idea dominated data processing and accounting for many decades in the twentieth century.

At Swiss Re, around 1.3 million punch cards were perforated in 1935 already and more than 2 million cards were processed by sorting and tabulating machines at that time.

The mechanical punch card machine pictured above was in use in Swiss Re at least since 1948 in the registration group. After 1972 it was used by a claims group until 1979, when a new claims handling system was launched.

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