Philco High Speed Card Reader

This paper describes the mechanical and electrical design and operating characteristics of a high speed tabulating card reader. This unit, a prime input device to the Philco 2000 Computer System, handles, and reads and checks cards at a peak rate of 38 full size tabulating cards per second. Design problem solutions in the picking and stacking area which make novel use o wrap clutches to provide an indexing card pick and an incremental stacking sensor are described in detail. The characteristics of the photosensitive reading station are also discussed.