This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

When you crank the gear of a music box, you can make the tune go as fast or as slowly

as you want, as you spin the little handle around and around and around.

The music is read from the series of little bumps, like Braille, producer Avery Trollflan.

These little bumps stick up and they hit a series of times, which create a song.

It's a form of storage.

This is DAG Spicer, Senior Curator at the Computer History Museum.

The music box is storing that program, which is the music.

You think of that as software, even though you might not think of it as that, that's really

what it is. It's software.

In this method of data storage, a series of bumps or a series of holes, was also used

in player pianos.

It's also the mechanism behind computer punch cards. Go ask your grandpa about those.

Throughout most of the 20th century, punch cards were the dominant form of data processing

input and output form.

Paper punch card technology, the precursor to electronic computing, was the way that data

was stored and tabulated for decades back when computers would take up a whole room.

This technology of bumps and holes is also why you're wearing what you're wearing.

Right, well, one of the things you may not know is that an early automated weaving machine

actually has a role to play in the history of computing.

When he says a weaving machine, DAG is talking about a loom.

A loom is gigantic.

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