Punch card
A stiff card with punched holes, read by a jacquard or dobby to decide which warp threads rise for each pick.
Also: jacquard card, pattern card
Each card stands for one pick of weft. A hole in a given place lets a hook rise and lift the matching warp thread, and a blank place leaves it down. A string of cards, laced together and fed in turn, holds a whole design. For a big Banarasi or Kanchipuram pattern many hundreds or thousands of cards are needed. The design is first drawn on squared paper, and then each row is read off and punched. Today many weavers use a computer-run electronic jacquard, which stores the same information without cards.