The year was 1890. The newest tech in the accounting scene was a Tabulating Machine. The advantages of the technology were immediately apparent for accounting and tracking inventory. Invented by Herman Hollerith, it served the purpose of data processing. Now in order to process data you need some kind of medium to contain this data. and thus the Punch Card was born.
The holes in the card represented information to be interpreted by a device called a Numerical or betabetical interpreter. In this manner, you could translate the holes in the card to human readable information. With simple logic operators like AND and OR plus delays you could even create something resembling a computer program. And so they did.
Fast forward to the 1960's. And these things called computers were all the rage. You would make a program for the computer with a series of Punch Cards, the data would be interpreted and the results would be printed(ON ACTUAL PAPER!) But uh-oh. Everyone knows computer programs have flaws sometimes right? Bugs that result in unexpected results. Well what the hell do you do about it if your bug is in a series of punch cards?
Throw the hole things away? Cut it up and paste it together? Nope. In general what they would do is grab a band-aid or similar device and just cover the offending holes. They would put a little
patch of fabric on it.
And this people, is why we call fixes to a computer program a patch!