Herman Hollerith patents his punched card calculator

Background. Herman Hollerith was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1860. He graduated from the Columbia School of Mines in 1879 and joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1882, where he taught mechanical engineering and conducted his first experiments with punched cards. He later left teaching to work for the United States Census Bureau, filing his first patent application in that year.

Patent Development. Hollerith's invention of the punched card tabulating machine is described as patented in 1884, marking the beginning of mechanized binary code. However, specific patents, including U.S. patent 395,782, were granted on January 8, 1889, following his work on the tabulating system. The legacy row's date of 8 June 1887 is not supported by the supplied passages.

Census Application. Hollerith developed punched-card data-processing technology for the 1890 U.S. census. He provided tabulators and other machines under contract for the Census Office. The use of his electromechanical tabulators reduced the time required to process the census from eight years for the 1880 census to six years for the 1890 census.