Time clock / Punch card

Bundy's patent spoke of mechanical time recorders in terms suggesting that earlier devices already existed, but his design included improvements, notably individual numbered keys that linked each timestamp to a specific employee. His brother Harlow organized the Bundy Manufacturing Company in 1889, and the devices spread rapidly through factories and offices. In 1894, Daniel M. Cooper of Rochester, New York, patented the first punch card time recorder, which used a pre-printed card instead of Bundy's key-and-paper-roll system. The card-based design became the dominant form for the next century.

In 1900, Bundy Manufacturing merged with two other time equipment companies to form the International Time Recording Company. In 1911, that company merged with several others to create the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, which changed its name in 1924 to International Business Machines, IBM. The genealogy is direct, the world's most influential computing company began as a manufacturer of devices for monitoring when workers arrived and left.

The Bundy clock formalized a relationship between employer and employee that had not previously required mechanical enforcement. Before its invention, timekeeping was a human function, performed by foremen or clerks who could be negotiated with, misled, or simply inattentive. The machine eliminated discretion. It recorded with mechanical precision, and its records became the basis for wages, discipline, and the concept that a worker who arrived at 8:03 instead of 8:00 had stolen three minutes from the company.