Much like the printing press reduced language, a sequence of letters and words, into components for repeatability, reuse, and reorganization, the card-tools supported the information overload of Enlightenment era drives to classify and categorize, like Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus ’ endeavor to catalog plant species on a global scale (Charmantier). As technological advances like the printing press and movable type led to an overload of printed material, the earliest ancestors of index cards reduced information into its components so harried monastic librarians could inventory and sort their collections without having to read each new work in its entirety (Krajewski 9). Lined, or unlined, punched or without a hole, human beings have used tools like index cards - or their predecessors, similarly sized paper slips - to store and manipulate data for centuries. Behold the humble index card, a 3x5” rectangular piece of cardstock made from heavy paper, linen, or cotton fibers whose ancestors revolutionized information storage, processing, and retrieval.
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