Today I learned about the Port-A-Punch from IBM.
IBM's Supplies Division introduced the Port-A-Punch in 1958 as a fast, accurate means of manually punching holes in specially scored IBM punched cards. Designed to fit in the pocket, Port-A-Punch made it possible to create punched card documents anywhere. The product was intended for "on-the-spot" recording operations -- such as physical inventories, job tickets and statistical surveys -- because it eliminated the need for preliminary writing or typing of source documents.
The Port-A-Punch reminds me of those Scantron multiple choice tests we took back in high school.
1958... decades before the Tablet Talent Show!
By the way, here are the four tablets I'm playing with this week. The PlayBook is the smallest one, and the TouchPad and iPad 2 are tied as the biggest. The Xoom, as you can see in this pic, is somewhere in the middle.
