Great stuff Dave.

In the emergency queue there's a show I did about a thing I made out of an empty cereal box, some of my mum's knitting needles and some punched cards when I was about 7, under the supervision of my brother who is more geeky than me.

It was like the thing you described.  Pulling a knitting needle out of the box made a card drop out of the bottom that corresponded to the needle pulled out.  I used bamboo skewers in the show version.

In COBOL I seem to remember the sequence numbers were in columns 1 to 6.  Column 7 was an asterisk for a comment, a solidus for a continuation, or nothing.