Hollerith Automatic Feed Tabulator.
After the 1890 census, the US population continued to grow and the original
tabulator-sorters were not fast enough to handle the 1900 census; so
Hollerith devised another machine to stave off another data processing
crisis" [104].
"Toward the close of the 1900 Census, Hollerith speeded the processing of
information by adding an automatic feed to his tabulator. It fed cards
downward into the unit through a circuit-closing press. Leter, the pins of
the sensing unit were replaced by brushes to further speed the flow of
information and information punched in the cards began to control the
operation of the units. Hollerith had begun to put information on the
assembly line" [44].
Photo: From Geoffrey Austrian, Herman Hollerith
[44], originally from
Scientific American, 1902.
