Since the technical term "chad" for the piece of card removed by a punch
has been publicised recently, I thought I'd pass on the etymological
note from the Hacker's Dictionary (E.S. Raymond, 1994, or consult
(among other sites) http://info.astrian.net/jargon/ :)
chad /chad/ n. 1. [common] The perforated edge strips on printer
paper, after they have been separated from the printed portion. Also
called
selvage, perf, and ripoff. 2. obs. The confetti-like paper bits punched
out of cards or paper tape; this has also been called `chaff', `computer
confetti', and
`keypunch droppings'. It's reported that this was very old Army slang,
and it may now be mainstream; it has been reported seen (1993) in
directions for a
card-based voting machine in California.
Historical note: One correspondent believes `chad' (sense 2) derives
from the Chadless keypunch (named for its inventor), which cut little
u-shaped tabs in
the card to make a hole when the tab folded back, rather than punching
out a circle/rectangle; it was clear that if the Chadless keypunch
didn't make them,
then the stuff that other keypunches made had to be `chad'. There is a
legend that the word was originally acronymic, standing for "Card Hole
Aggregate
Debris", but this has all the earmarks of a backronym.
-Robert Dawson
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