A man examines a punch-card ballot in the 2000 Palm Beach County, Florida election. A man stares intently at a punch card that is being held in a stand that is the shape of a human hand.
26 October 2022
(This entry is about the keypunch detritus. If you’re looking for the origin of the cartoon character Mr. Chad, see the Kilroy entry.)
The Florida vote-counting debacle during the 2000 US presidential election brought the rather obscure and obsolescent word chad to the attention of the public. A chad is that bit of paper left behind when punch cards and paper tape are perforated. Since by the year 2000 most of the computing world had abandoned punch cards and paper tape, the term had fallen out of use except in specialized applications, such as voting.
The origin of the word is uncertain, with several possible explanations having merit. While chads have been with us since automated machinery was introduced into 18th century textile mills at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the word chad itself is relatively new and the name only appears toward the end of the technology’s life cycle.
The first known use of chad was unearthed by researcher Douglas Wilson, found in a 1930 patent application (US Patent 1,884,755):
There is also provided a receptacle or chad box 175 (Fig. 1 [sic]) adapted to be removably inserted between the vertical arms of bracket 68 (Fig. 6) and disposed below die 72 to receive the chips cut from the edge of the tape.
(Note: the patent application has an error; the drawing of the chad box is on Figure 2, not Figure 1.)
A 1938 patent application (US Patent 2,213,223) links the word chad with chaff:
Positioned above the code punches 13 is a chaff or chad chute 101.
And there is this 1939 patent application (US Patent 2,308,554) that describes the problem of hanging chads, although it does not use that phrase. In the device described, the hanging chads are considered a feature, not a bug:
Prior devices of the type according to the present invention have been arranged to cut out the perforations completely at a single movement, thereby producing chads or pieces of waste material which often present difficult problems of disposal. To avoid the necessity of disposing of this waste material by preventing its formation, the present invention provides a perforating arrangement whereby the perforations are not completely cut out, but the chads are permitted to remain attached to the perforated material (for example, tape), the preferred arrangement being such that the punches are utilized to so pierce the material as to leave an uncut portion which serves as a hinge, thus resulting in a hinged lid which will yield to the sensing pins in a telegraph transmitter when the tape is employed for automatic control of signal transmission.
Note that all three of these patents are by men working for the Teletype Corporation, and a Howard Krum was one of the inventors of the first two. Because of this, it’s tempting to think that chad was a coinage of or restricted in use to the engineers at the Teletype Corporation, but it’s more likely that the word was a term of art in the industry by 1938.
So where does it come from? There are several, possibly all related, words from other industries that are similar. One such is the Scots word chad. Jamieson’s 1808 Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language gives the following definition, and the much more recent Scottish National Dictionary repeats it:
CHAD, s. Gravel, such small stones as form the bed of rivers, S.B.
Teut. Schadde, cespes, gleba; or rather, kade, litus, ora, Kilian; q. the beach which generally consists of gravel. Belg. kaade, a small bank. Hence,
CHADDY, adj. Gravelly; as, chaddy ground, that which consists of gravel, S.
It is a small semantic leap from the detritus from a quarry that is used for gravel to paper refuse from a punch card.
There is also an English dialectal use of chad, a variant of the more common chat, meaning a chip of wood or small twig used for firewood. Hence the dialectal chattocks or chatwood, the detritus left after gathering up firewood.
Or the paper chad could simply be a variation on chaff.
There are two proffered explanations that we can definitely discount though. Chad is sometimes said to have come from a certain Mr. Chadless, who invented a chadless keypunch. Chad, in this explanation, is a back formation from chadless. But no record of any such man has been found and what evidence we do have suggests that chadless followed chad, not the other way around.
The second false explanation is that it is an acronym for Card Hole Aggregate Debris. As with most proffered acronymic origins, this one is bogus on its face.
Sources:
Jamieson, John. An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, vol. 1 of 2. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1808, s.v., chad, n. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Krum, Howard L. (inventor). “US Patent 1,884,755, Coupon Printer.” United States Patent Office, application 16 October 1930, patented 25 October 1932, 7. Google Patents.
Krum, Howard L. and Albert H. Reiber (inventors). “US Patent 2,213,223, Telegraph Transmitter.” United States Patent Office, application 18 July 1938, patented 3 September 1940, 4. Google Patents.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. chad, n.2., chat, n.3.
Scottish National Dictionary. Dictionaries of the Scots Language/Dictionars o the Scots Leid (DSL), version 3.0, 2022, s.v. chad, n..
Swan, Carl W. (inventor). “US Patent 2,308,554, Printing Telegraph Apparatus.” United States Patent Office, application 20 May 1939, patented 19 January 1943, 1. Google Patents.
Wilson, Douglas G. with notes by Gerald Cohen. “Two Early Attestations of Chad ‘Paper Chip(s)[’], Including an Antedating to 1930.” Comments on Etymology, vol. 36, no. 5, 18–19. (Note: Wilson gives an incorrect patent number for the second, 1940, patent.)
Wright, Joseph. The English Dialect Dictionary, vol. 1 of 6. London: Henry Frowde, 1898, 567, s.v. chat, n.
Photo credit: Mark T. Foley, 2000. State Library and Archives of Florida. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain image.