Floyd County Museum punches in with Tractor Talk

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

Punch card processing was the topic of the day as Derek Huhn spoke about creating a database of Oliver Tractors for the Floyd County Museum’s first Tractor Talk of the year on Saturday, June 14.

A big historical tractor enthusiast, Huhn has been volunteering his time to the museum by driving down from Minnesota to scan the museum’s collection of Oliver punch cards.

The Floyd County Museum has an estimated 250,000 punch cards from between 1954 through 1976, each one serving as a sort of “birth certificate” for every individual tractor that came off the line.

In the pre-computer age, the cards were used to record specific details for each tractor, containing information about everything from the engine to the tires that can be used to help collectors restore or repair their antique tractors.

The goal is to have a digital database that can be used to quickly decipher the information on the punch cards, but physically transcribing a quarter million pieces of decades old cardboard is a demanding task.

One method that Huhn, along with fellow tractor historian Tom Seaberg, developed was a visual detection system. By placing a card on a 3D printed surface and taking a digital picture, they’ve been able to use custom developed software to read the cards for them.

“We’re basically taking an image of the card and detecting the punch marks on it,” said Huhn.

While faster and easier than hand entry, the visual recognition program is still prohibitively time consuming though, only bringing the estimated amount of time needed to scan the 250,000 punch cards down to two years.

Instead of using new technology to read the cards, the museum has gone old-school by tracking down an antique punch card reader from the 1970s. Capable of reading 300 cards per minute, the time estimate comes down from years to just weeks.

Museum Director Mckenna Lloyd said she appreciates Huhn’s and Seaberg’s efforts and is looking forward to having a complete database of punch cards.

“Without you and Tom this would have never happened,” said Lloyd. “It’s a really cool project. I’m really excited about it.”