Hollerith Tabulating Machines

Hollerith Tabulating Machines

Herman Hollerith combined the old technology of punched cards (used in the Jacquard Loom) with the (then) new electrical technology of vacuum tubes, to produce a sorting and tabulating machine. In this machine, wires poked through the holes in the punched cards into cups of Mercury, which completed an electrical circuit and registered the data on the card. With the help of his machine, the 1890 census was completed in six weeks.

Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company to produce and sell his machines, and his company did remarkably well. The machines his company produced were used to store time records, inventory and accounting data, and were used for sorting, tabulating, and collating this information. They were not computers in the sense we know them, but they were ideal servants in an age that increasingly felt the need for accurate and timely management of large quantities of data. Hollerith's fledgling venture is today known as IBM.

Photo courtesy of IBM Archives.


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