card punch

Well, my latest acquisition finally arrived from England (why are all the good things in Europe...). Anyways, I finally have a Hollerith Manual Card Punch. You can see a picture of one at the Computer Museum of America web site: http://www.computer-museum.org/collections/hollerith.html Mine was made in england, by International Computers and Tabulators Limited. Does anyone know if that company was a part of what became IBM, or did they just make an unauthorized copy of the machine? My punch is slightly different that the one at that web site, in that it never had a nameplate below the keys, and the uppermost button on the picture isnt a part of my card punch. Basically, you have the 12 keys that punch the 12 hole positions and advance the card one row, with a button to inhibit the advance so you can multi-punch the same row (or allows skipping a row), and a second button that releases the remainer of the card. The button that is missing in the design of the punch I have must not have been very useful, as I cant imagine what else a person would need to do. There is an adjustable card stop, so that you can set the punch to allow you to skip any number of initial columns on each card automatically. The chad just drops to the ground underneath the punch. If I can find some information about this punch, i'll make a nice web page about it. -Lawrence LeMay