On June 8, 1887, Herman Hollerith applied for US patent #395,781 for his punch card counting machine, a device considered to be among the foundations of the modern information processing industry and ...

The first automatic data processing system. Developed by Herman Hollerith, a Census Bureau statistician, the machine was first used to count the U.S. census of 1890. It was so successful that ...

From the early 20th century into the 1970s, Americans used punched cards to enter data onto tabulating equipment and then electronic computers. This early key-operated punch is based on patents of the ...

Commissioned by the United States Census Bureau to make counting people easier, the device would lead to the creation of IBM After the United States Census Bureau dispatched its workers across the ...

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. By the late 19th century, the U.S.

1890: The U.S. Census Bureau uses a tabulating machine for the first time. Freed of the laborious process of hand-sorting its data, the bureau is able to produce a complete census within two years.

The punch card, the first way to program a machine, turned 300 this year. The first semi-automatic loom was created in Lyon as early as 1725. To commemorate this, we have taken the liberty of updating ...

As a schoolboy growing up in New York City in the 1870s, Herman Hollerith often managed to sneak out of the schoolroom just before spelling lessons. His teacher noticed and one day locked the door; ...