: 65 Electronic components were used on other machines beginning in the late 1940s. The first use of an electronic component was in 1937 when a photocell was used in a Social Security bill-feed machine. Initially all machines were manual or electromechanical. The operation of many machines was directed by the use of a removable plugboard, control panel, or connection box. All but the earliest machines had high-speed mechanical feeders to process cards at rates from around 100 to 2,000 per minute, sensing punched holes with mechanical, electrical, or, later, optical sensors. The IBM 557 Alphabetic Interpreter (photo) allowed holes in punched cards to be interpreted and the punched card characters printed on any row or column.

This progression, or flow, from machine to machine was often planned and documented with detailed flowcharts that used standardized symbols for documents and the various machine functions. This data processing was accomplished by processing punched cards through various unit record machines in a carefully choreographed progression. They allowed large volume, sophisticated data-processing tasks to be accomplished before electronic computers were invented and while they were still in their infancy. Unit record machines came to be as ubiquitous in industry and government in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century as computers became in the last third. Starting at the end of the nineteenth century, well before the advent of electronic computers, data processing was performed using electromechanical machines collectively referred to as unit record equipment, electric accounting machines ( EAM) or tabulating machines.

Ibm type 557 alphabetic interpreter