The IBM 711 was a punched card reader used as a peripheral device for IBM mainframe vacuum tube computers and early transistorized computers.

It included a control panel that could be wired to transfer any 72 columns out of the 80 on a card into the computer's memory, though in practice the panel was almost always wired to read the first 72 columns.

Computer object code could then be executed directly.

[2] The 72 column restriction influenced early computer languages, such as Fortran and Cobol, which only allowed source code in the first 72 columns of each punched card.

The 711 was relatively slow and magnetic tape was much faster, so it was common for 7000 series installations to include an IBM 1401, with its high speed peripherals, to do card-to-tape and tape-to-line-printer operations off-line, with the 711 mainly used for initial program load of operating systems and diagnostics.