Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanicaltabulating machine forpunched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in accounting. His invention of the punched card tabulating machine, patented in 1884, marks the beginning of the era of mechanized binary code and semiautomaticdata processing systems, and his concept dominated that landscape for nearly a century.[1][2][3]
Hollerith founded a company that was amalgamated in 1911 with several other companies to form theComputing-Tabulating-Recording Company. In 1924, the company was renamed "International Business Machines" (IBM) and became one of the largest and most successful companies of the 20th century. Hollerith is regarded as one of the seminal figures in the development of data processing.[4]
At the suggestion ofJohn Shaw Billings, Hollerith developed a mechanism using electrical connections to increment a counter, recording information.[10] A key idea was that a datum could be recorded by the presence or absence of a hole at a specific location on a card. For example, if a specific hole location indicatesmarital status, then a hole there can indicatemarried while not having a hole indicatessingle. Hollerith determined that data in specified locations on a card, arranged in rows and columns, could be counted or sorted electromechanically. A description of this system,An Electric Tabulating System (1889), was submitted by Hollerith toColumbia University as his doctoral thesis,[11] and is reprinted inBrian Randell's 1982The Origins of Digital Computers, Selected Papers.[12] On January 8, 1889, Hollerith was issued U.S. Patent 395,782,[13] claim 2 of which reads:
Replica of Hollerith tabulating machine with sorting box, circa 1890. The "sorting box" was an adjunct to, and controlled by, the tabulator. The "sorter", an independent machine, was a later development.[14]
The herein-described method of compiling statistics, which consists in recording separate statistical items pertaining to the individual by holes or combinations of holes punched in sheets of electrically non-conducting material, and bearing a specific relation to each other and to a standard, and then counting or tallying such statistical items separately or in combination by means of mechanical counters operated by electro-magnets the circuits through which are controlled by the perforated sheets, substantially as and for the purpose set forth.
Hollerith had left teaching and began working for theUnited States Census Bureau in the year he filed his first patent application. Titled "Art of Compiling Statistics", it was filed on September 23, 1884; U.S. Patent 395,782 was granted on January 8, 1889.[13]
Hollerith initially did business under his own name, asThe Hollerith Electric Tabulating System, specializing inpunched card data processing equipment.[16] He providedtabulators and other machines under contract for the Census Office, which used them for the1890 census. The net effect of the many changes from the 1880 census: the larger population, the data items to be collected, the Census Bureau headcount, the scheduled publications, and the use of Hollerith's electromechanical tabulators, reduced the time required to process the census from eight years for the1880 census to six years for the 1890 census.[17]
He invented the first automatic card-feed mechanism and the firstkeypunch. The 1890 Tabulator washardwired to operate on 1890 Census cards. Acontrol panel in his 1906 Type I Tabulator simplified rewiring for different jobs. The 1920sremovable control panel supported prewiring and near instant job changing. These inventions were among the foundations of the data processing industry, and Hollerith's punched cards (later used forcomputer input/output) continued in use for almost a century.[19]
^abO'Connor, J. J.;Robertson, E. F."Herman Hollerith".The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive. School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland. RetrievedAugust 12, 2024.
^Lydenberg, Harry Miller (1924).John Shaw Billings: Creator of the National Medical Library and its Catalogue, First Director of the New York Public Library. American Library Association. p. 32.
^Report of the Commissioner of Labor in Charge of The Eleventh Census to the Secretary of the Interior for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1895, Washington, D.C., July 29, 1895, Page 9: "You may confidently look for the rapid reduction of the force of this office after the 1st of October, and the entire cessation of clerical work during the present calendar year. ... The condition of the work of the Census Division and the condition of the final reports show clearly that the work of the Eleventh Census will be completed at least two years earlier than was the work of the Tenth Census." Carroll D. Wright Commissioner of Labor in Charge.
^"IBM Archives: Frequently Asked Questions"(PDF). Archived fromthe original(PDF) on May 14, 2005. Some accounts of the forming CTR state that only three corporations were included. This reference notes that only three of the four corporations are represented in the CTR name. That may be the reason for the differing accounts.
^American Standard FORTRAN. American Standards Association, X3.9-1966. pp. 9, 10. "4.2.6Hollerith Type. A Hollerith datum is a string of characters. This string may consist of any characters capable of representation in the processor. The blank character is a valid and significant character in a Hollerith datum."
Austrian, Geoffrey D. (1982).Herman Hollerith: The Forgotten Giant of Information Processing. Columbia University Press. p. 418.ISBN0-231-05146-8.
Truesdell, Leon E. (1965).The Development of Punch Card Tabulation in the Bureau of the Census 1890-1940. US GPO. Includes extensive, detailed, description of Hollerith's first machines and their use for the 1890 census.
Engelbourg, Saul (1954).International Business Machines: A Business History (PhD dissertation). Columbia University. p. 385. Reprinted by Arno Press, 1976,from the best available copy. Some text is illegible.
Heide, Lars. "Herman Hollerith". In Jeffrey Fear (ed.).Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present. German Historical Institute, 2017.
Hollerith, Herman (April 1889)."An Electric Tabulating System".The Quarterly, Columbia University School of Mines.X (16):238–255. From the Columbia Univ. History site: This article is the basis for his 1890 ColumbiaPh.D. Extracts reprinted in (Randell, 1982).
Hollerith, Herman (1890).In connection with the electric tabulation system which has been adopted by U.S. government for the work of the census bureau (PhD dissertation).Columbia University School of Mines.
Hollerith, Herman (December 1894)."The Electrical Tabulating Machine".Journal of the Royal Statistical Society.57 (4). Blackwell Publishing:678–682.doi:10.2307/2979610.JSTOR2979610. From Randell (1982),"... brief... fascinating article... describes the way in which tabulators and sorters were used on ... 100 million cards ... 1890 census."
Herman Hollerith (2017) In Immigrant Entrepreneurship Heide, Lars. German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present, vol. 4, edited by Jeffrey Fear. German Historical Institute. Last modified April 5, 2017. Recommended!!
Richard Hollerith Papers atHagley Museum and Library. Richard Hollerith was the grandson of Herman Hollerith and part of this collection documents the sale and settlement of the Herman Hollerith estate following the death of his last remaining child, Virginia.
