Notes and follow up about
Hollerith
1884
- filed a series of patents for an electromechanical system that counted and
sorted punch cards. In Babbages
analytic engine cards, had instructions, numbers and variables. In the Hollerith system, cards contained
statistics - eg: gender, population, sales, etc - Cards would be sorted into
groups, then a tabulator would count cards or add values within that
category. That is, it collated, added
and tabulated; it did not compute. The
contribution to computing was the use of cards which was the means by which the
early computer systems, 1950's through 1970's, would enter data and programs.
1880 Census - Head count completed
in about 6 months but tabulation of data was not completed until about
1887. Census bureau actively looked for
improvements, several of which were considered, and Hollerith's method was
successful. He produced the machines
that were leased by the Census Bureau.
"Punch
Photograph" idea led to the use of cards over a punched tape. This was the way a conductor on a western
railroad would punch a ticket that had columns for various attributes of a passenger,
such as gender, hair color, eye color etc., to prevent others from using a
ticket.
Sort on one column at a time and
resort on others to narrow down categories.
eg: white male farmers with >500acres of tobacco, and then count the cards.
Electricity introduced to the
process. Steel rods would fall into
cups of mercury where the holes were (Jacquard methodology) and complete an
electric circuit.
1890 Census - Head count
(66,622,250) available in 6 weeks.
Other statistics began appearing
immediately.
1900's - Punch Card Accounting
spread into commercial use. Several manufacturers of machinery were producing punch
card machines. The industry did not
sell these; they were leased, which led to cash flow problems. So ...
1911-1912
- Merger of Hollerith and others into Computer, Tabulating and Recording Co
(CTR). Thomas Watson operations
controller.
Hollerith Tabulating
Machine Co
International Time
Recorder Co - Time clocks
Bundy Mfg Co - Time
clocks
Computing Scale Co of
America - Retail scales & slicing machines
1914 - Thomas Watson became General
Manager of CTR. By 1918, it had about
1400 tabulators and about 1100 sorters on lease in 650 offices in industry and
government and was producing 110 million cards a month.
1924
- CTR name changed to International Business Machines.