Laugh at the punch cards if you wish. Up until the early/mid 1990’s, the energy management computer system used to control the entire generation and transmission system of the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company was still programmed with IBM cards. It operated without them, of course, but programming was still done that way.
I miss the Sigma-5!
Back in the day (late ‘70s, early ‘80s), when I was a meter reader for that company, we used IBM cards to mark the meter readings (with #2 soft lead, of course) so that data processing could calculate the electric bills. They hated it when it rained because the cards would get pretty soggy.
I wasn’t laughing. But I was thinking about buggy whips.