Hollerith, Herman (hō`lərĭth), 1860–1929, American inventor, b. Buffalo, N.Y. After graduating from Columbia Univ. (B.S., 1879), he worked on the U.S. Census of 1880. Intrigued by the problem of tabulating vast amounts of data, he developed over the next several years a card that could be represent data through a series of punched holes and a number of machines for punching and tabulating the cards. In 1896 Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company which, through mergers and acquisitions, grew into the International Business Machines Company.

Bibliography

See G. Austrian, Herman Hollerith (1982).

Hollerith, Herman

(born Feb. 29, 1860, Buffalo, N.Y., U.S.—died Nov. 17, 1929, Washington, D.C.) U.S. inventor. He attended Columbia University's School of Mines and later assisted in the 1880 U.S. census. By the time of the 1890 census, he had invented machines to record statistics by electrically reading and sorting punched cards, and the census results were consequently obtained in one-third the time required in 1880. In 1896 he founded the Tabulating Machine Co., which later became IBM Corp. Hollerith's electromechanical sensing and punching devices were forerunners of the input/output units of later computers.

Hollerith, Herman (1860–1929) engineer, computer inventor; born in Buffalo, N.Y. Working as a statistician for the U.S. census of 1880, he became aware of the need for automation in the recording and processing of vast amounts of data. Working first at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then at the U.S. Patent Office (1884–90), he invented a tabulating machine that was fed data via electrical contacts controlled by the holes in punch cards. His machine won a contest for the best data-processing equipment for the U.S. census of 1890 and he organized the Tabulating Machine Company (1896) to make improved versions that soon were being used by other countries. His company merged with others to become the Computing–Tabulating–Recording Company (1911) which adopted the name of International Business Machines Corporation in 1924. Although he was early praised for revolutionizing statistical processing, it was only decades later that he was recognized as having anticipated the modern computer.

Hollerith, Herman - Herman Hollerith