I explored this a bit last year in a project for converting small snippets of RPG, COBOL, and FORTRAN to a punch card like format in <a href="https://github.com/barrettotte/punchit" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/barrettotte/punchit</a><p><a href="https://www.masswerk.at/keypunch/" rel="nofollow">https://www.masswerk.at/keypunch/</a> is a good tool for getting the basics of the punch card encoding scheme.<p>There's also a handful of people over at Hackaday that have made hardware for reading punch cards. Example: <a href="https://hackaday.com/2015/01/17/arduino-reads-punch-cards/" rel="nofollow">https://hackaday.com/2015/01/17/arduino-reads-punch-cards/</a>
Someone made an entire 3D IBM 1401 simulator. Punch cards. Flip switches. Scratch your head. Enjoy! <a href="https://rolffson.de/" rel="nofollow">https://rolffson.de/</a><p>Hello World example <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-COOnvYTuo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-COOnvYTuo</a>
Oh sweet Turing's apple why?<p>Ha! In all seriousness, I'm curious (not judgmental). Academic? Just for fun? Lost a bet? A secret Santa gift?