Herman Hollerith

The promulgator of the {punched card}. Hollerith was

born on 1860-02-29 and died on 1929-11-17. He graduated from

Columbia University, NewYork, NY, USA. He joined the US

Census Bureau as a statistician where he used a punched card

device to help analyse the 1880 US census data. This punched

card system stored data in 80 columns. This "80-column"

concept has carried forward in various forms into modern

applications.

In 1896, Hollerith founded the {Tabulating Machine Company} to

exploit his invention and in 1924 his firm became part of

{IBM}. The Hollerith system was used for the 1911 UK census.

(1996-01-02)