|
In 1804, a French weaver named Joseph-Marie
Jacquard created a way of automatically controlling the warp and
weft of thread on a loom by punching holes in cards to record
fabric patterns. It was the first use of punched cards to direct a mechanical
process, but the idea was later applied to other functions,
including programming player pianos and computers.
The man who invented the first electric
machine to read punch cards was Herman Hollerith (1860-1929), who
earned a degree in engineering from Columbia University School of
Mines in 1879 and worked on the United States Census the next
year. While lecturing
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the 1880s, he
took Jacquard’s concept of punched cards as the basis for
recording various census data (age, marital status, profession,
etc.) and then invented an electric machine able to read the
results. Operators
pressed switches instructing the machine to examine categories on
the cards, and the results were tabulated by clock-like counters.
In 1886, Hollerith successfully tested his tabulating
system by recording and reporting vital statistics for the
Department of Health in Baltimore, Maryland.
In 1889, Hollerith received a patent and won
a contest to tabulate the 1890 national census.
An article, “Taking the Eleventh Census,”
published in the January 11, 1890 issue of Harper’s Weekly,
mentioned in the final column, “There is also a suggested plan
of tabulating by electrical appliances.”
In fact, the Hollerith Tabulating Machine reduced the
tabulating process by years, saved taxpayers millions of dollars,
and earned the inventor a Ph.D. from Columbia (1890). Over the next decade, his tabulating machine was used in the
censuses of Austria, Canada, Norway, and Russia. A discussion of the role Hollerith’s machines would play in
the 1900 U.S. census appeared in the August 19, 1899 Harper’s
Weekly, with a diagram of the punch card and
photographs of the punching machine, the tabulating machine, and
tabulating records.
In 1911, Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine
Company merged with the Computing Scale Company and the
International Time Recording Company to form the
Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), which changed its
name to International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924. It is with some justification that Hollerith’s Tabulating
Machine Company has been called “essentially the world’s first
computer company.”
|
Introduction - John Adler, HarpWeek Publisher...
Adding Machine / Calculator, 1857
