First use of punched paper cards in computing

It was the fusion of automatic calculation with programmability that produced the first recognizable computers. In 1837, Charles Babbage, "the actual father of the computer",[20] was the first to conceptualize and design a fully programmable mechanical calculator,[21] his analytical engine.[22] Babbage started in 1834. Initially he was to program his analytical engine with drums similar to the ones used in Vaucanson's automata which by design were limited in size, but soon he replaced them by Jacquard's card readers, one for data and one for the program. "The introduction of punched cards into the new engine was important not only as a more convenient form of control than the drums, or because programs could now be of unlimited extent, and could be stored and repeated without the danger of introducing errors in setting the machine by hand; it was important also because it served to crystallize Babbage's feeling that he had invented something really new, something much more than a sophisticated calculating machine."[23] Now it is obvious that no finite machine can include infinity...It is impossible to construct machinery occupying unlimited space; but it is possible to construct finite machinery, and to use it through unlimited time. It is this substitution of the infinity of time for the infinity of space which I have made use of, to limit the size of the engine and yet to retain its unlimited power.