I was discussing wiring and such elsewhere, and was reminded of my days 50 years ago in the computer lab, learning FORTRAN, and sitting at an IBM 029 card punch machine. All our programs had to be typed onto IBM cards line by line, each line on a card. The machine punched holes in the card that could be read by the systems. There were other machines: card sorters, card printers/line printers, card duplicators. Each piece of equipment was programmed by a large plug board behind a panel. it was a big board of holes - a giant cribbage board - with wires that were plugged from here to there in a way the machine understood.
I always found those panels visually appealing.