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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.
During a short stint compiling manufacturing statistics for the US Census Office, Herman Hollerith grew frustrated with the organization’s manual process of counting questionnaires. The tedious, error-prone labor was creating an operational nightmare for an overtaxed agency.
In the late 1880s, inventor Herman Hollerith, who was inspired by train conductors using holes punched in different positions on a railway ticket to record traveler details, invented the recording of data on a machine-readable punched card.
Learn how Herman Hollerith invented a system of punched cards and tabulators to process Census data, and how his company evolved into IBM. Explore the related companies and products in France, Germany, and Britain.
Sep 5, 2023 · Herman Hollerith. Herman Hollerith (1860-1929), Columbia University School of Mines EM 1879, Columbia University PhD 1890. Photo: IBM. Herman Hollerith is widely regarded as the father of modern automatic computation.
Description. By the late 19th century, the U.S. government no longer could compile all the statistics it needed by hand. The engineer Herman Hollerith designed a tabulating machine to count Americans by machine. Hollerith tried out his machine by compiling mortality statistics for the city of Baltimore on cards like this one.
Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company (TMC) which eventually became global technology giant International Business Machines Co Ltd (IBM). In 1928, IBM introduced a standard and...
