Card image is an archaic term for a character string, usually 80 characters in length, that was, or could be, contained on a single punched card. IBM cards were 80 characters in length, UNIVAC cards were 90 characters. A punched card typically held multiple data fields, some numeric, some alphabetic. Many data formats, such as the FITS image file format, still use card images as basic building blocks -- even though punched cards are now mostly obsolete.
Famous quotes containing the words card and/or images:
“Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“We picked each other from afar and knew
What hour of terror comes to test the soul,
And in that terror’s name obeyed the call,
And understood, what none have understood,
Those images that waken in the blood.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)