Chad refers to fragments sometimes created when

hole A hole is an opening in or through a particular medium, usually a solid Body (physics), body. Holes occur through natural and artificial processes, and may be useful for various purposes, or may represent a problem needing to be addressed in m ...

s are made in a paper, card or similar synthetic materials, such as computer

punched tape file:PaperTapes-5and8Hole.jpg, Five- and eight-hole wide punched paper tape file:Harwell-dekatron-witch-10.jpg, Paper tape reader on the Harwell computer with a small piece of five-hole tape connected in a circle – creating a physical program ...

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widel ...

s. The word "chad" has been used both as a

mass noun In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, non-count noun, uncount noun, or just uncountable, is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete eleme ...

(as in "a pile of chad") and as a countable noun (pluralizing as in "many chads").

Etymology

The origin of the term chad is uncertain. Patent documents from the 1930s and 1940s show the word "chad", often in reference to punched tape used in

telegraphy Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

. These patents sometimes include synonyms such as "

chaff Chaff (; ) is dry, scale-like plant material such as the protective seed casings of cereal grains, the scale-like parts of flowers, or finely chopped straw. Chaff cannot be digested by humans, but it may be fed to livestock, ploughed into soil ...

" and " chips". A patent filing in 1930 included a "receptacle or '' chad box'' ... to receive the chips cut from the edge of the tape." A 1938 patent filing included a "chaff or ''chad chute''" to collect the waste fragments. Both patents were assigned to

Teletype Corporation The Teletype Corporation, a part of AT&T Corporation, American Telephone and Telegraph Company's Western Electric manufacturing arm since 1930, came into being in 1928 when the Morkrum-Kleinschmidt Company changed its name to the name of its tra ...

. The plural ''chads'' is attested from about 1939, along with ''chadless'', meaning "without oosechad". Clear definitions for both terms are offered by Walter Bacon in a patent application filed in 1940 assigned to

Bell Telephone Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

: "... In making these perforations, the perforator cuts small round pieces of paper, known in the art as ''chads'', out of the tape. These ''chads'' are objectionable ... ''Chadless'' tape is prepared by feeding blank tape through a device which will not punch a complete circle in the tape but, instead, will only cut approximately three-quarters of the circumference of a circle ... thereby leaving a movable, or hinged, lid of paper in the tape." In the '' New Hacker's Dictionary'', two unattributed and likely humorous derivations for "chad" are offered, a

back-formation Back-formation is the process or result of creating a neologism, new word via Morphology (linguistics), morphology, typically by removing or substituting actual or supposed affixes from a lexical item, in a way that expands the number of lexemes ...

from a personal name "Chadless" and an

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

for "Card Hole Aggregate Debris". Other etymologies claim derivation from the Scottish name for river gravel, ''chad'', or the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

slang for

louse Louse (: lice) is the common name for any member of the infraorder Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera was previously recognized as an order (biology), order, until a 2021 genetic stud ...

, ''chat''.

Partially punched chad

When a chad is not fully detached, it is described by various terms corresponding to the level of modification from the unpunched state. The distinctions are of importance in counting cards used in voting. The following terms are sometimes used when describing a four-cornered chad: *Hanging chads are attached to the ballot at only one corner. *Swinging chads are attached to the ballot at two corners. *Tri-chads are attached to the ballot at three corners. *Dimpled chads are attached to the ballot at all four corners, but bear an indentation indicating the voter may have intended to mark the ballot. (Sometimes "pregnant" is used to indicate a greater mark than "dimpled".)

2000 United States presidential election controversy

In the 2000 United States presidential election in Florida, many of the state's counties used Votomatic-style punched card ballots where incompletely punched holes resulted in partially punched chads: either a "hanging chad", where one or more corners were still attached, or a "fat chad" or "pregnant chad", where all corners were still attached, but an indentation appears to have been made. These votes were not counted by the tabulating machines. The aftermath of the controversy (''

Bush v. Gore ''Bush v. Gore'', 531 U.S. 98 (2000), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court on December 12, 2000, that settled a recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election between George W ...

'') caused the rapid discontinuance of punch card ballots in the United States.

References

External links

{{commons category, Chads
Snopes – Origin of 'Chad'

on chad
BBC News
on chad

Papercutting Art
Punched card 2000 United States presidential election in Florida 2000 United States presidential election Election technology Vote counting Ballots

Etymology

Partially punched chad

2000 United States presidential election controversy

See also

References

External links