Hollerith Tabulating Machine
An electric punched-card tabulator used for the 1890 US census, which finished counting years sooner than the 1880 census had.
Herman Hollerith, a former Census Bureau employee, built a system in which each person's record was a set of holes in a card. A card passed under pins in a press, and each pin that found a hole closed an electric circuit and advanced a counter. Clerks could sort cards by feeding them through a box with sliding lids.
The Census Bureau used the system for the 1890 count. Hollerith's company later merged with others into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, which was renamed International Business Machines in 1924.
Why it matters
Hollerith's design created the data-processing industry that grew into IBM. The 80-column card that IBM introduced in 1928 stayed the standard way to enter programs and data into computers into the 1970s.
Key facts
- First used at scale for the 1890 US census.
- Hollerith earned a patent in 1889 for his electric tabulating system.
- His company became part of what was renamed IBM in 1924.
- Cards were sorted and counted by machine rather than by hand.
Sources
- Campbell-Kelly, Martin, and William Aspray, et al. Computer: A History of the Information Machine. 3rd ed. Westview Press, 2013.
- Austrian, Geoffrey D. Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information Processing. Columbia University Press, 1982.
- US Census Bureau, "Herman Hollerith" history pages (census.gov/history).