There's an interesting connection between this and edge-notched punched cards (a special interest of mine), via a 1936 article in Nature (See https://www.nature

There's an interesting connection between this and edge-notched punched cards (a special interest of mine), via a 1936 article in Nature (See https://www.nature.com/articles/137535a0 https://www.nature.com/articles/137535a0 .) Quoting Kilgour's "Origins of Coordinate Searching" at https://books.google.se/books?hl=sv&lr=&id=4crkFsx73msC&oi=fnd&pg=PA107&dq=Origins+of+Coordinate+Searching&ots=J0kzu-NhED&sig=j5go5BOIJAeYLPFr2nUIvN3hESQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Origins%20of%20Coordinate%20Searching&f=false https://books.google.se/books?hl=sv&lr=&id=4crkFsx73msC&oi=f... . > In 1936, S. H. Clarke, of Britain’s Forest Products Research Laboratory at Princes Risborough, published a brief note in Nature reporting on an unexpected observation: Detection of relations of ‘‘recorded features’’ on edge notched punched cards with a particular feature already sorted. > He had sorted a file of several hundred cards each listing a specimen of timber, by increases in specific gravity, and noticed ‘‘by glancing at the arrangement of the other notches . . . a distinct tendency for strength to increase with specific gravity’’ (Clarke, 1936, p. 535). He added that it was easy to recognize unusual correlations among notches. The spreadsheet plot in this video is essentially the same as the image in the 1936 Nature publication!