IBM 24 Card Punch and IBM 26 Printing Card Punch reference manual detailing the operation and features of IBM’s card punches manufactured from the early 1950s to mid 1960s. The IBM 24 and IBM 26 share similar designs and functionalities, with the key difference being that the IBM 26 includes a printing mechanism to print characters on cards as they are punched.
The manual explains the machines’ mechanical features, such as the card hopper, punching station, reading station, and card stacker, as well as the program unit that controls automatic operations like skipping, duplicating, and shifting between numeric and alphabetic punching. It also provides instructions for manual card insertion, error correction, and ribbon replacement.