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In the late 1880s Herman Hollerith, inspired by conductors using holes punched in different positions on a railway ticket to record traveler details such as gender and approximate age, invented the recording of data on a machine-readable medium.
Hollerith’s work over the next decade eventually led to the groundbreaking invention of the punch card tabulating machine, installed in a federal government office for the very first time on...
The first two contestants captured the data in 144.5 hours and 100.5 hours. The third contestant, a former Census Bureau employee named Herman Hollerith, completed the data capture process in 72.5 hours. Next, the contestants had to prove that their designs could prepare data for tabulation (i.e., by age category, race, gender, etc.).
- 1888 Competition
- Components of The Hollerith Tabulator
- Pantograph
- Card Reader
- Hollerith Tabulator Dials
- Sorting Table
View larger image Hollerith's electronic tabulator, 1902. Following the 1880 census, the Census Bureau was collecting more data than it could tabulate. As a result, the agency held a competition in 1888 to find a more efficient method to process and tabulate data. Contestants were asked to process 1880 census data from four areas in St Louis, MO. W...
Herman Hollerith's tabulator consisted of electrically-operated components that captured and processed census data by "reading" holes on paper punch cards. The primary components of the system are explained below.
View larger image A pantograph used to create punch cards. To begin tabulating data, census information had to be transferred from the census schedules to paper punch cards using gang punches and pantographs. Using this equipment, Census Bureau clerks "punched" each card to represent specific data on the census schedule. Census Bureau clerks using ...
Each Hollerith tabulator was equipped with a card reading station. The manually-operated card reader consisted of two hinged plates operated by a lever (similar to a waffle iron). Clerks opened the reader and positioned a punched card between the plates. Upon closing the plates, spring-loaded metal pins in the upper plate passed through the punched...
The 1890 Hollerith tabulators consisted of 40 data-recording dials. Each dial represented a different data item collected during the census. The electrical impulses received as the reader's pins passed through the card into the mercury advanced the hands on the dials corresponding to the data contained on the punch card (i.e., responses to inquirie...
A sorting table was positioned next to each tabulator. After registering the punch card data on the dials, the sorter specified which drawer the operator should place the card. The clerk opened the reader, placed the punch card in the designated sorter drawer, reset the dials, and positioned a new card to repeat the process. An experienced tabulato...
Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was an American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in accounting.
Hollerith’s punched card tabulator, developed in the 1880s, eased the administrative burden of hand-counting the population in a country whose numbers were exploding.
Hollerith's use of standardized punched cards to represent information, and his addition of electricity to mechanical tabulation, greatly increased the effectiveness and range of applications of tabulating and, later, computing machines.
