> It seems to be Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" written at the very top of the library punch cards.
Each card has some text printed on the top row. The bulk of the card is a grid of pre-printed numbers. Punching out holes on the card lets you represent data in a standardised character format, where successive columns represent individual characters (from top to bottom). For example, in the IBM 80-column format [0]. The text printed on the top of a card makes individual cards human-readable.
When I first encountered computers, in approx 1979, this was how we programmed them. Now get off my lawn, with your new-fangled glass-teletypes.
The method used to print the labels on top of the cards is rather fascinating, as well, and involves a mechanical bit store for the matrix font. (No electronics involved, all electro-mechanical.)
Each card has some text printed on the top row. The bulk of the card is a grid of pre-printed numbers. Punching out holes on the card lets you represent data in a standardised character format, where successive columns represent individual characters (from top to bottom). For example, in the IBM 80-column format [0]. The text printed on the top of a card makes individual cards human-readable.
When I first encountered computers, in approx 1979, this was how we programmed them. Now get off my lawn, with your new-fangled glass-teletypes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card#IBM_80-column_for...