NDC = 1969 + Punched Card + Really?
The FDA created the National Drug Code (NDC) system in 1969, originally as a 9-digit identifier later standardized to 10 digits - right in the era when IBM 80-column punch cards dominated government and healthcare data processing.
For anyone under 50: a punch card was a stiff paper card used from the early 1900s through the early 1980s to store data by punching holes in specific column positions. Each card held 80 columns and every column represented a character. People typed into a keypunch machine and computers read the cards mechanically, one at a time. Entire software programs, patient record data and early pharmacy systems lived in stacks of these cards - and if you dropped the stack, your day was over.
No document says the FDA designed the NDC for punch cards but the fixed-width, segmented 10-digit format fits perfectly with the constraints of punch-card data fields. That's how most federal identifiers of the era were structured.
So next time you enter an NDC into PharmSaver or your PMS, remember: you're using a code that's more than 55 years old - at least until 2033, when the FDA transitions to a uniform 12-digit NDC format!