Hollerith tabulators

With the latest U.S. census just getting under way, we thought we'd take a tour of population-counting technology from days gone by. This tabulating system was developed by Herman Hollerith for the Census Bureau and was first used in the 1890 census. Before that time, the bureau was struggling to complete a census by hand every 10 years.

Eventually, Hollerith's patents were bought by a business known as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. You may have heard of it by its later name: IBM.

Hollerith's tabulators, sometimes called "statistical pianos," were one of the first steps toward what we now think of as the information technology revolution. They were adopted by business for payroll and inventory records; punch cards were in use through the 1960s.