Herman Hollerith patented an electro-mechanical tabulating
machine on January 8, 1889. The Census Bureau used
his machines from the 1890 through 1950 censuses, after
which it replaced mechanical tabulation with computers.
January 8 marks the anniversary of Herman Hollerith's 1889 patent for an electro-mechanical tabulating machine that would revolutionize the processing and tabulation of data through the first half of the 20th century.
Hollerith was born in Buffalo, NY, in 1860, and earned an Engineer of Mines degree from the Columbia University School of Mines in 1879. He joined the U.S. Census Bureau in 1883. With encouragement from John Shaw Billings (noted for his pioneering work with vital statistics), Hollerith began experimenting with methods to speed tabulation using electro-mechanical devices.
Hollerith's interest in mechanical tabulation could not have come at a better time for the Census Bureau. The agency was inundated with 1880 Census data, and it expected even greater volumes of statistics in 1890. Hoping to ease the census clerks' burden, the agency invited inventors to submit tabulating devices to an 1888 competition. The inventor with the most efficient, time-saving invention would receive a contract to supply the equipment used to tabulate the 1890 Census. Three contestants accepted the challenge—the first two devices translated data collected in St. Louis, MO, from paper questionnaires to machine-readable data in 144.5 and 100.5 hours and sorted it into categories (e.g. age, sex, race, gender) in 44.5 and 55.5 hours, respectively. The device submitted by the third contestant—Herman Hollerith—translated the schedules' data in 72.5 hours and sorted it into categories in an astonishing 5.5 hours!
After his decisive win in the St. Louis data tabulation competition, Hollerith submitted a patent application—Art of Compiling Statistics— to the U.S. Patent and Tradmark Office in September 1888, which issued his patent on January 8, 1889. Hollerith's electro-mechanical tabulating technology permitted the Census Bureau to tabulate, sort, and publish thousands of pages of data filling 25 census volumes, hundreds of Bulletins (on a variety of population, economic, and agricultural topics), a statistical compendium, a Statistical Atlas, and volumes of the annual Statistical Abstract of the United States. Despite the greater amount of data collected, the Census Bureau completed publication of the 1890 data 18 months sooner than it published the 1880 Census. In fact, Hollerith's tabulating machines and punch cards proved so efficient that the Census Bureau used improved versions of the technology into the 1950s when it replaced mechanical tabulation with computers and computer tape.
You can learn more about Herman Hollerith, data collection and tabulation, and the computing industry using census data and by exploring the Census Bureau's Web site. For example:
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Herman Hollerith a patent for his mechanical tabulator on January 8, 1889. In it, he described
the steps an operator, like the one shown above, took to record census data from transcription to reporting the data electro-mechanically.
On January 1, 1892, Annie Moore became the first immigrant processed at New York's Ellis Island Immigration Station.
Approximately 12 million immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island before it closed in 1954.
On May 11, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson added Ellis Island to the Statue of Liberty National Monument.
Photo courtesy of the National Parks Service.
A fire in the basement of the U.S. Department of Commerce destroyed or severely damaged most of the 1890 Census records on January 10, 1921.
Some 1890 records survive, including those for parts of the District of Columbia and counties in 10 states. Records from the 1890 Veterans Census, (like President Rutherford B. Hayes's record above) also are available at the National Archives and Records Administration.
Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
The Census Bureau's Current Population Survey first asked about home computer usage in 1984. In that year, 6.98 million households (8.2 percent) owned a computer. Computer ownership rose to 116.3 million (83.8 percent) according to data collected by the American Community Survey in 2013.