The card that used to go in the book pocket, stamped with the due
date.  Your own library card, with a stamped date for each book taken
out.  Remember those?  You took your books up to the desk, and the
librarian pushed each card into the slot of a stamping machine. 
<chunk!>  Remember the chopping sound it made?  A card could fill up
with several columns of purple-stamped dates, up and down both sides,
before it was used up.

What I wondered back then, and still wonder now, is how the
date-stamping machine works.  By what means did it sense the
last-stamped date and place the new date beneath it?  There were no
punched holes anywhere in the card.  The edges were smooth, not
notched in any way.  The librarian did nothing to position the card
for the placement of the new date, just slid it into the slot.  By
what magic did a machine that appeared to be as purely mechanical as
an automatic stapler "know" where to place the next date?  I've wanted
to know this for nearly half a century, for no reason other than
curiosity.

According to several librarians and a representative of Gaylord, major
suppliers of library materials including book chargers, the machine
"took a snip" out of the card each time a date was entered. That snip
served to place the card correctly for the next use A little drawer
catches the "chads."

Here is an e-mail response from Gaylord:

The book charger did take a "notch" out of the book card every time
the card was used. That is how the date would appear on the correct
line. We still sell and lease book charger machines. Although
technology has replaced many machines, we still have customers using
the charging machine.
Hope this helps answer your customer inquiry.
 
Regards,
Peg Myers
peg.myers@gaylord.com

search strategy: book charger; gaylord
 
Well, know we know.  Thanks for asking the question.

Nellie Bly

---

Request for Answer Clarification by apteryx-ga on 18 Nov 2002 22:17 PST

Took a snip where?  That is astonishing.  I don't remember any kind of
notching or punching.  How might I have seen it?  Is it deliberately
inconspicuous or invisible?

Wait--let me restate for clarity, please:  where does the snip occur,
and what size and shape is it?  I consider that to be part of the
"how."  I would like to know what I would have seen or felt if I'd
known what to look for.

---

Clarification of Answer by nellie_bly-ga on 18 Nov 2002 22:58 PST

As described by those who remember it, the "snip" was made on the edge
of the card.
As to size and shape, the tiny  pieces of card were called by several
"confetti."

Perhaps, you might find more satisfactory answers to your various
questions by contacting Gaylord directly at the email address provided
in my answer.

---

Clarification of Answer by nellie_bly-ga on 19 Nov 2002 11:55 PST

Here's some more information from a library that still uses the machines.

"The date card is 'divided' into quarters (1 and 2 on the first side and 3
and 4 on the reverse). The machine clips the card from the top left side and
works its way down to the middle of the card, then you turn the card around
and the machine clips the top (formerly bottom) left side of 2.  When that
first side is completely clipped, you turn the card over and start on 3,
which is now clipping the left side of the reverse of the card (formerly the
unclipped right side).  And finally, you can use bottom 4 quarter when 3 is
through.

"The piece or chad cut out is tiny (about 1/8 of an inch) and the cuts are
progressive, so if you do it smoothly, the entire border of the card will be
1/8" smaller on all 4 sides."

I'd say the question was answered.  I accept the answer that was given
even if it doesn't match up to my memory.  The additional information
rounded it out.

Sorry, at my local library it was done by hand.  I can think of ways
to do it, but that's not quite what you're looking for:)

Have you considered asking *your* librarian?  They might even still
have an old machine lying around - the central library I visit has
yearly sales where unwanted donations, obsolete encyclopedias, used
equipment, and the like are sold.

I am in the same situation as haversian. As for one possible way it
might be done (not what you are looking for I know) is the machine
looks for the distinctive purple color of the stamp and places the
next stamp immediately below it.

No real help, but you might be interested to know that Gaylord
introduced their Electric-Automatic Book-Charger in 1931
<http://www.chapman.edu/library/flashbackIT/LibraryMedia.html>

Gaylord Bros were still advertising their Model C Book Charger in
2000, but it seems to have gone off the market now.

I wonder if time clocks work the same way, where (typically) factory
employees put their cards into a machine to be stamped when arriving
at the strat of their shift and leaving at the end.

Good luck; I'm interested in this one myself!

Unfortunately, in the Municipal Library of my home town they used a
different method. A Hollerith card was placed in a pocket in the book,
and then a microfilm photo of it was made with a photo-mechanical
registration machine. These things worked quite well for 25 years, but
now they are also computerized.

Scriptor

As I recall, it was a matter of physical placement. The "librarian"
simply placed the card so that the date would appear in the correct
space.

Jeesh, I did it a gazillion times, but it was a long time ago.

Interesting comments so far, but nothing close to my answer yet.  If
the machine "looked for" prior stamps, I want to know how it "saw"
them.  Time cards have holes in them so the machine can line up with
the last hole.  The librarian did not do any visual lining up, except
to use one side of the card or the other.  Otherwise repeat punches
(on your card, when you took out 5 books) would not have spaced down a
line, and somewhere in all those hundreds of thousands of punches
there would have been an erroneous overstamp because sonmewhere,
someday, somehow, some librarian would have had to make a mistake. 
But no such instance was in evidence in all the cards I ever saw.  I
never saw any stamp that didn't fall beneath its predecessor just
where it should.  If the machine had displayed the last date through a
window so the librarian could position the card to stamp beneath it,
we'd have seen them moving it down instead of an automatic stamp!
stamp! stamp! while they looked the other way.  Hollerith cards also
have holes physically punched in them.  This machine automatically
stamped beneath the last purple-inked date, usually in straight
registration and with uniform spacing, without any observable
attention on the part of the librarian.  How?  That's my question.