We probably are close to the same age. My dad was an engineer who also learned to program FORTRAN in the 70's.
When I asked him a similar question his reply was (quotes are paraphrased): "It was way too tedious to do. You'd spend hours getting the cards just right. We used to put them in a shoebox and mark them with a pen in case we dropped them on the way to the lab. Then you'd wait until the next day to get your results. If you had a mistake you'd repeat the whole process".
Basically it was considered tedious, grunt work in his opinion (at the time...he later of course has come to understand the importance).
When I asked him a similar question his reply was (quotes are paraphrased): "It was way too tedious to do. You'd spend hours getting the cards just right. We used to put them in a shoebox and mark them with a pen in case we dropped them on the way to the lab. Then you'd wait until the next day to get your results. If you had a mistake you'd repeat the whole process".
Basically it was considered tedious, grunt work in his opinion (at the time...he later of course has come to understand the importance).