Inventors
Herman
Hollerith - Punch Cards
Modern data processing began with
the inventions of American engineer, Herman Hollerith.
In 1881, Herman Hollerith
began designing a machine to tabulate census data more efficiently than
by traditional hand methods. The U.S. Census Bureau had taken eight years
to complete the 1880 census, and it was feared that the 1890 census would
take even longer. Herman Hollerith invented and used a punched card device to
help analyze the 1890 US census data. Herman Hollerith's great breakthrough was
his use of electricity to read, count, and sort punched cards whose holes
represented data gathered by the census-takers. His machines were used
for the 1890 census and accomplished in one year what would have taken
nearly ten years of hand tabulating. In 1896, Herman Hollerith founded the Tabulating
Machine Company to sell his invention, the Company became part of IBM in
1924.
Herman Hollerith first got his idea for
the punch-card tabulation machine from watching a train conductor punch
tickets. For his tabulation machine he used the punchcard invented in the
early 1800s, by a French silk weaver called Joseph-Marie
Jacquard. Jacquard
invented a way of automatically controlling the warp and weft threads on
a silk loom by recording patterns of holes in a string of cards.
Hollerith's punch cards and tabulating
machines were a step toward automated computation. His device could automatically
read information which had been punched onto card. He got the idea
and then saw Jacquard's punchcard. Punch card technology was used in computers
up until the late 1970s. Computer "punched cards" were read electronically,
the cards moved between brass rods, and the holes in the cards, created
a electric current where the rods would touch.
Note: A chad is the small
piece of paper or cardboard produced in punching paper tape or data cards;
also can be called a piece of chad. The term originated in 1947 and is
of unknown origin. In laymen's terms chad is the punched out parts of the
card - the holes. (more on punch cards used in voting
machines)
Herman
Hollerith
The world's first statistical engineer,
several pages on Hollerith.
Herman
Hollerith
Invented a punch-card tabulation
machine system for statistical computation - National Inventors Hall of
Fame.
Herman
Hollerith
Biography
Herman
Hollerith
The world's first statistical engineer.
Herman
Hollerith's Tabulating Machines
In addition to being prohibitively
expensive, the existing system of making tally marks in small squares on
rolls of paper and then adding the marks together by hand was extremely
time consuming.
The
Birth of Data Processing
Modern data processing began with
the inventions of American engineer, Herman Hollerith. Pictures of the
punch card and machines.
Punch
Card Gallery
Pictures of computer punchcards.
Related Innovations
Computers
Computer
Peripherals
images library of congress
~Mary
Bellis
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