Herman Hollerith: Electric Tabulating Device, 1890

A Tabulating System

Through experimentation, Hollerith discarded perforated paper tape input and pneumatic signal handling. He fixed on a system in which mechanical counting and sorting of cards by detection of a certain punched hole location and electrically driven signals would yield the required statistics from a very large collection of information.

Hollerith left MIT in 1884 to work at the U.S. Patent Office and on September 29 of that year patented his first invention, a "method, system, and apparatus for compiling statistics," otherwise known as the Hollerith Electric Tabulating System. Thirty U.S. patents and many foreign patents on improved systems would follow.

Electrical Review newspaper, Electrical Science in Census Work, 1/26/1889 (305k) | Page 2 (343k) | Page 3 (350k) | Page 4 (344k)

Booklet, from John S. Billings, Forms of Tables of Vital Statistics - Needs of a City Health Department, 1888 (473k) | Page 2 (439k) | Page 3 (708k) | Page 4 (761k) | Page 5 (696k)