Editing Keypunch (section)

==Stamping Jacquard cards, 1801 through 1890==
[[Jacquard machine|Jacquard]] cards were said to be stamped or cut, rather than punched. The first Jacquard cards were stamped by hand, sometimes using a guide plate. An improvement involved placing the card between two perforated metal plates, hinged together, inserting punches according to the desired pattern, and then passing the assembly through a press to cut the card. These essentially manual processes were later replaced by machines. 'Piano machines,' so named for their keys, operated by keyboards and comparable in function to unit record keypunches, became the most common.<ref name=Bell/>