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US Census Hires Hollerith
In the interest of making better economic decisions for the country, the US Census hires Herman Hollerith to work with superintendent, Fancis Walker, and Dr. John Billings, to improve the auto computing systems they had available (2019, November). Their initial focus was on the Jaquar Loom since it operated using a hole punched cards as the input to create a desired output in an almost automatic fashion (The Gale). -
Tabloid Machine
Hollerith created the tabloid machine. This would take long continuous sheets of paper with holes in it, to register specific things such as gender or citizenship of a person. The way is would register was "pins over the holes would pass through the cards to be submerged in mercury, which created electrical circuits that yielded hits on counters," (Hollerith). -
Patent Filed
Although the Tabloid machine had been created, it used the ideas from the Jacquard Loom and telegraph system which electronically read holes in cards. However, in (Hollerth,) they said he could have patented the idea of combining the two methods for the new use of calculating. It wasn't until 1887 that he finally filed for this patent after much testing it. They tested it to record vital statistics for the Department of Health and to count the deceased (Gauthier). -
Too Many Holes!
With several buyers of Hollerith's Tabloid Machine, you could imagine the amount of holes needed to be punched. He created an automatic hole-punching system that was used to improve efficient in using this machine. This was a big deal for several reasons. From population numbers, statistics, to voting, this machine was the beginning of a high speed evolution for the computer (Hollerith).
