Astro Hacker News - The punched card tabulator

forinti |next [-]

> During a short stint compiling manufacturing statistics for the US Census Office, Herman Hollerith grew frustrated with the organization’s manual process of counting questionnaires.

Go out to the world and do something, however boring it may seem. You've got more chances of having a bright ideia than if you stay home just thinking.

Bluestein |root |parent [-]

Indeed. I am fascinated by the fact, also, that Hollerith was a mining engineer. Used to thinking in a constructive, technical fashion in one complex domain, and transfered skills to a new, nascent, one.-

mohamedkoubaa |root |parent [-]

People didn't use to use the phrase "inter-disciplinary" until late in the 20th century because before that there was no taboo against applying skills in one domain in another

jp57 |next |previous [-]

While spitting out numbers, these machines generated exorbitant profits over decades for the company that would become known as IBM.

Funny that IBM would describe its own profits as “exorbitant”. A little truth in advertising for once?

ClearAndPresent |root |parent [-]

No mention of Dehomag or what those punch-card machines were used for in the 1930's, so only homeopathic levels of truth.

danrecht |next |previous [-]

Fun fact: Hollerith did his initial work on this during his brief stint as a mechanical engineering instructor at MIT so (if you squint) this is the first MIT compute hardware spinout.

Bluestein |root |parent [-]

Heh. MIT -> C-T-R -> IBM.-

jordanscales |next |previous [-]

⌘+F "Germany" no results, curious

|root |parent [-]

mac3n |next |previous [-]

In the "Hollerith Tabulator/Sorter, 1890", the machine counts and chooses an output tray. The operator acts solely as card transport.

steelkilt |next |previous [-]

Another fun fact: The USAF data center I worked at in 1987 was still using punched cards and paper tape.

forinti |root |parent [-]

I used punched cards in a university entrance exam in 1991. We would poke holes to mark the answers. They were identical to the IBM cards in shape and size but there were perforation lines to help you punch out the answers with a pencil. It was precarious and you could easily damage it.

Somebody told me the tabulating machine sometimes munched up a card.

p_l |root |parent [-]

For manual entry, there were cards you'd mark with special pencil that would leave magnetically recognizable marks.

a3w |previous [-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust not mentioned? Back then, Punched cards for Nazis. Nowadays, "punch a nazi" is a trending meme.

Tangurena2 |root |parent [-]

The number tattooed on people's arms were the primary key to look their records up in the system. Long ago, I worked with a woman who had one of those tattoos.