Since I work with punch cards at the Computer History Museum, I can answer this. A standard IBM punch card has 80 columns and 12 rows, with each character repre

Since I work with punch cards at the Computer History Museum, I can answer this. A standard IBM punch card has 80 columns and 12 rows, with each character represented by 1-3 punches in a column. A lace card has all the holes punched, so it's not punched with a normal card pattern. You can create a lace card, though, with a keypunch if you hold down the "multi punch" key. This lets you punch multiple times in a single card column, allowing you to punch patterns that don't have keys. So you could type &-0123456789 with multi-punch in each column to punch all 12 holes, which would be tedious but give you a lace card. (More efficient key combinations exist). A second alternative is punching the card via computer using the card reader/punch attached to the computer. Normally, this lets you punch characters on the card. But using the optional "punch column binary" instruction, you can punch an arbitrary 12-bit binary value in each column. So you can create a lace card this way, if it doesn't jam.