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Information about Herman Hollerith

Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician who developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards in order to rapidly tabulate statistics from millions of pieces of data.

Personal life

Hollerith entered the City College of New York in 1875 and graduated from the Columbia University School of Mines with an "Engineer of Mines" degree in 1879. In 1880, he listed himself as a mining engineer while living in Manhattan, and he completed his Ph.D. in 1890 at Columbia University. In 1890, on September 15, he married Lucia Beverley Talcott (December 3, 1865 – August 4, 1944) of Veracruz, Mexico, and they had six children (three sons and three daughters)[1]. Other than his inventions, Hollerith was said to cherish three things: his German heritage, his privacy and his cat, Bismarck. He also liked good cigars, fine wine, Guernsey cows, and money. He also disliked property taxes, and the hard-driving salesmen of Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

He died in 1929 of a heart attack and was buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Electronic tabulation of statistical data

Being urged by John Shaw Billings[2], Herman Hollerith developed a mechanism for reading to make electrical connections to trigger a counter to record one more of each value. The key idea (due to Billings), however, was that all personal data could be coded numerically. Hollerith saw that if the numbers could then be punched in specified locations, the now familiar rows and columns, on the cards, the cards could be counted or sorted mechanically. On January 8 1889, he was issued U.S. Patent 395,782 , claim 2 of which reads:

The herein-described method of compiling statistics, which consists in recording separate statistical items pertaining to the individual by holes or combinations of holes punched in sheets of electrically non-conducting material, and bearing a specific relation to each other and to a standard, and then counting or tallying such statistical items separately or in combination by means of mechanical counters operated by electro-magnets the circuits through which are controlled by the perforated sheets, substantially as and for the purpose set forth.

Inventions and businesses

Hollerith built machines under contract for the US Census Bureau, which used them to tabulate the 1890 census in 2.5 years. The 1880 census had taken seven years. He started his own business in 1896 when he founded the Tabulating Machine Company. Most of the major census bureaus around the world leased his equipment and purchased his cards, as did major insurance companies. To make his system work he invented the first automatic card-feed mechanism, the first Key punch (i.e. a punch that was operated from a keyboard) allowing a skilled operator to punch 200–300 cards per hour and a tabulator. The 1890 Tabulator was hardwired to operate only on 1890 Census cards. A wiring panel in his 1906 Type I Tabulator allowed it to do different jobs without having to be rebuilt (the first step towards programming).These inventions were the foundation of the modern information processing industry.

In 1911, four corporations, including Hollerith's firm, merged to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR).[3] Under the presidency of Thomas J. Watson, it was renamed IBM in 1924.

References

  • Austrian, G.D. (1982). Herman Hollerith: The Forgotten Giant of Information Processing. Columbia. ISBN 0231051468. 
  • Hollerith, Herman (1890). In connection with the electric tabulation system which has been adopted by U.S. government for the work of the census bureau''. Ph.D. dissertation. Columbia University School of Mines. 
  • Hollerith, H. (April 1889). "An Electric Tabulating System". The Quarterly, Columbia University School of Mines X (16): 238-255. 
  • Hollerith, Herman (Dec 1894). "The Electric Tabulating Machine". Journal of the Royal Statistical Association 57 (4): 678-682. 

Notes

1. ^ Lucia Beverley Talcott. RootsWeb. Retrieved on 2007-01-18.
2. ^ Lydenberg, Harry Miller (1924). John Shaw Billings: Creator of the National Medical Library and its Catalogue, First Director of the New York Public Library. American Library Association, 32. 
3. ^ IBM Archives: Frequently Asked Questions. Some accounts of the merger forming CTR state that three corporations were merged. This reference notes that only three of the four merged corporations are represented in the CTR name. That may be the reason for the differing accounts.
  • This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

External links

Enlarge picture
Hollerith's grave at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

See also

Persondata
NAMEHollerith, Herman
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTIONstatistician, inventor, businessman
DATE OF BIRTHJanuary 29 1860(1860--)
PLACE OF BIRTHBuffalo, New York
DATE OF DEATHNovember 17 1929
PLACE OF DEATH
February 29 is a day added into a leap year of the Gregorian calendar.

February 29 is also known as bissextile day. A year which has a February 29 is, by definition, a leap year.
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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
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1857 1858 1859 - 1860 - 1861 1862 1863

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Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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"17 November" is also the name of a Marxist group in Greece, coinciding with the anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic uprising.
November 17
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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
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Year 1929 (MCMXXIX
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Anthem
"Das Lied der Deutschen" (third stanza)
also called "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit"
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Motto
"In God We Trust"   (since 1956)
"E Pluribus Unum"   ("From Many, One"; Latin, traditional)
Anthem
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Statistics is a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. It is applicable to a wide variety of academic disciplines, from the physical and social sciences to the humanities.
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tabulating machine was a machine designed to assist in tabulations. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census.

The term "Super Computing" was first used by the New York World newspaper in 1929[1]
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punch card or punched card (or punchcard or Hollerith card or IBM card), is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions.
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City College of The City University of New York (known more commonly as City College of New York or simply City College, CCNY, or colloquially as City) is a senior college of the City University of New York, in New York City.
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The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (popularly known as SEAS) is a school of Columbia University which awards degrees in engineering, applied physics and applied mathematics.
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Columbia University is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Its main campus lies in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan, in New York City.
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September 15 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

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Thomas John Watson, Sr. (February 17, 1874 – June 19, 1956) was the president of International Business Machines (IBM), who oversaw that company's growth into an international force from the 1920s to the 1950s.
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Oak Hill Cemetery is a twenty-two acre (9 ha) historic cemetery and botanical garden located in Georgetown, Washington, D.C..

Oak Hill began in 1848 as part of the rural cemetery movement, directly inspired by the success of Mount Auburn Cemetery, when William Wilson
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Georgetown is a neighborhood located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., along the Potomac River waterfront. Founded in 1751, the city of Georgetown substantially predated the establishment of the city of Washington and the District of Columbia.
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John Shaw Billings (April 12, 1838 – March 11, 1913) was a librarian and surgeon and the moderniser of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office of the Army and as the creator of the New York Public Library.
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The United States Census Bureau (officially Bureau of the Census as defined in Title 13 U.S.C.   11 ) is a part of the United States Department of Commerce.
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The Eleventh United States Census was taken June 1, 1890. Unfortunately, most of the 1890 census was destroyed in 1921 during a fire in the basement of the Commerce Building in Washington, D.C.
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The United States Census of 1880 was the tenth United States Census. Conducted by the Census Bureau, it determined the resident population of the United States to be 50,189,209, an increase of 30.2 percent over the 38,558,371 persons enumerated during the 1870 Census.
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A key punch is a device for entering data into punched cards by precisely punching holes at locations designated by the keys struck by the operator. Early keypunches were manual devices.
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There are many types of keyboard, usually differentiated by the switch technology employed in their operation. Since there are so many switches needed (usually about 80-110) and because they have to be highly reliable, this usually defines the keyboard.
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tabulating machine was a machine designed to assist in tabulations. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census.

The term "Super Computing" was first used by the New York World newspaper in 1929[1]
..... Click the link for more information.
plug-board, or, more formally, a control panel, was a device used to direct the operation of unit record equipment (and some early computers) built by IBM and other companies during the punch card era.
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