This picture is of a so-called IBM punch card, used for 
storage of computer programs and data, during the early 
era of computing (1944-1972).  It was invented much earlier by 
later IBM scientist Herman Hollerith in 1889 (US Patent 395,782) 
-- long before the first computer.  It was  first used to store 
and tabulate data for the 1890 census.  Hollerith also invented
the first automatic card-feed mechanism and the first key punch
machine.

From Wikipedia:
"In 1911, four corporations, including his firm, merged to form 
the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR).  Under the 
presidency of Thomas J. Watson, it was renamed IBM in 1924."
(Actually, it was named "International Business Machines"; it did 
not become simply "IBM" until relatively recently.)

IBM or "Hollerith" codes were invented to represent alphanumeric 
characters.  These codes were physically punched into the card, 
one character per card column (and printed in human readable form
across the top of the card).

There were/are 12 rows per column (2 rows above the 0 row),
and 80 columns (hence 80 characters per card).  For 
example, an "A" was coded with a punch in row 12 (2 rows 
above the 0 row), plus a punch in row 1 (row 2 would be a 
"B", etc.).