Copechat Paramount Sorting System

Published April 12, 2025 Updated April 12, 2025

Preserving the past: a specimen deck showcasing edge-notched cards and their ingenious sorting system.

1925 United KingdomAdvertisingEngineeringEphemeraSecondary UsesGoodall

Edge-notched cards were used for data storage and analysis purposes through much of the 20th century, until they were replaced by computers. For example, employee records, students and teachers, library holdings and other types of categorized information. Each card has circular punch holes around the outer edge, with a notch to one hole on the top and bottom of the card corresponding to (in this case) the suit, and another on each side for the card denomination, as marked on a reference card, in this example the Joker. A long thin pin or knitting needle was passed through the holes when the cards were formed as a pack. Thus, cards matching certain data criteria fall loose, or drop out of the pack, when the whole pack is shaken.

There were several well-known brand names of these early data retrieval systems including Cope-Chat, E-Z Sort, Flexisort and McBee Keysort cards. The cards shown here are advertising for the Copechat Paramount Sorting System • see the box

Copechat Paramount Sorting System specimen cards manufactured by the London Playing Card Co., c1925

Above: Copechat Paramount Sorting System specimen cards manufactured by the London Playing Card Co., c1925.

This is another example of secondary use of playing cards throughout history: stiffener for bookbinders, library index cards, calling cards, emergency currency and now specimen cards for data retrieval systems!

Since the late 1920s, James Albert Mann of Copeland & Chatterson Co, Cope-Chat Works, Dudbridge, Stroud, Gloucestershire, had been registering patents for various filing systems, including a licence to manufacture and market an edge punched card needle sorting system given the brand name 'Paramount'.

References

Espacenet Patent Search : Copechat

Punched Cards : A brief illustrated technical history

Hackaday : Before Computers, Notched Card Databases

Youtube : McBee-style index cards

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By Jon Randall

Australia • Member since May 28, 2020

From 6 or 7 years of age I enjoyed playing cards with my family, and still enjoy a variety of games today with various groups and individuals. I contribute my competitive nature to enjoying games … it’s not that I like to win, I dislike losing! I was barely 10 years old when my great Uncle left me a small collection of playing cards and that was the starting point of my collecting. The competitive streak in me helped develop me into a competitive swimmer that sent me to various places around the world, including a 6 year stint in the US, where for much of that time I was at university. I’ve always enjoyed car boots flea markets, yard sales, charity shops etc., and my eye would never miss a pack of playing cards. Even after my swimming career finished I coached at a high level for many years and continued enjoying the discovery of some great finds around the world. For decades my collection continued to grow, despite selling a portion of it via eBay over the years. It wasn’t until post 2010 that I realised, mostly due to correspondence with Australian friends, that there were so many single playing card collectors. This intrigued me. I had so many packs of cards at home that I made the bold decision to share a good number with singles collectors, and subsequently listed around 7000 for sale on eBay. That did make a dent in my collection, but there’s still around 30,000 packs taking up quite a bit of space at home. Crazy? Yes, but I’ve seen bigger hoards a few times! There’s so many I surprise myself finding packs I forgot I had when I look in a box I’d not seen in a while.

My eBay IDs if you’d like to look are “worldwide_playing_cards” & “playing_cards_world

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