From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for March 15, 1975:

In the interests of saving money, Kansas University was now offering its students computer cards through a vending machine. According to officials, KU had exhausted its 1974-75 budget for computer cards. Until this past week, students who needed cards to prepare computer programs had been able to just grab a handful from a bin in the KU Computation Center, but this had depleted the supply to the point that the cards could no longer be free. During spring break, vending machines dispensing the cards were installed in the center, and students now had to pay 35 cents per one hundred cards. “There are two factors in the decision to sell the cards,” explained Paul Wolfe, computation center director. “The primary reason is that the cost of the cards has gone up about 75 percent in the last year…. Another factor is that computer usage, and card usage, is up about 20 percent, we estimate, over last year.” Wolfe added that waste had been a big problem. “We’ve had very little control over who used the cards,” he said. “They were in open bins, available for anyone who needed them for a computer program. The cards are a convenient size for book marks, review notes and the like. Some of the cards have been used for purposes other than preparing data.”