Happy Birthday Herman Hollerith, the overlooked pioneer of modern computing
By Chris Green in Editorial
Today is a special time in the calendar – it’s leap year day, when girlfriends propose to their boyfriends, and when 29 February babies get to celebrate their actual birthday on the correct date.
Today we want to bring the spotlight onto an individual who was born on this day, an important, but often overlooked person in the history of technology - Herman Hollerith.
While the life and work of Hollerith are well-documented, his is a name that rarely surfaces in the history of computing, yet his contribution was as critical as the likes of Babbage, Berners-Lee, Sinclair the two Steves and Bill Gates.
This American inventor, who gained a PhD from Columbia University, was born on this day in 1860 in Buffalo, New York. His contribution to computing is nothing short of mammoth, his invention paved the way for the data storage we use today and allowed the software development industry to get off the ground.
While working on the 1880 US census, a colossal task that was manually intensive, frequently prone to error and was just begging for mechanisation, Hollerith devised a system for reading in encoded data on cards through a series of punched holes – better known as the punched card processor. Punched cards were the early form of data storage, and allowed early computers to read in pre-prepared data, whether that be program information or raw information for analysis.
After some initial trials of a data reading device that used punched paper tape, he settled on the punched card format, and his with paper tape, he settled on punched cards (a form of data input pioneered for use in the Jacquard loom). Hollerith designed equipment - a tabulator and sorter - to add up the results, and he was rewarded with the contract for tabulating the 1890 US census.
On 8 January 1889, Hollerith was issued US Patent 395,782 for his invention. He continued to develop these early calculating and computing devices, building more advanced tabulating machines and sorters. He also invented the first automatic card-feed mechanism, as well as the first key punch.
Perhaps most critical, he had a hand in the rise of modern programming, introducing a wiring panel in his 1906 Type I Tabulator, which allowed operators to easily ‘reprogram’ it to do different tabulating jobs without having to mechanically alter or rebuild the machine. This was in contrast to the original 1890 Tabulator, which was built specifically to do the census tabulation task.
These inventions were without doubt the foundation of the modern information processing, business intelligence and information management industries we have today.
His company, the Tabulating Machine Company, merged with three others in 1911 to create Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, a company that still exists today.
You probably use one of its products right now, and don’t even realise it. That’s because it changed its name in 1924 to………….IBM.
So Happy Birthday to Herman Hollerith, whose contribution not only helped propel computing forward, but ultimately, gave birth to Big Blue itself.
Have a Happy Leap Year Day, one and all!
Rated: 92% (5 votes)
Loading ...Comment by Computer Consultants Kit - March 7, 2008 on 1:36 am
Hi Chris,
I thought I was the only one who noticed that Herman Hollerith was a leap year baby… or leapling as I believe they’re correctly called.
In the spirit of celebrating what’s special about leap year, I actually wrote an e-mail about Hollerith to our clients and future clients last Wednesday.
Since our clients are largely small business computer consultants, I pointed out a few key firsts.
Hollerith was one of the few key sparks that gave birth to IBM.
Hollerith’s conflicts with master salesman Watson of IBM-fame setup perhaps one of the World’s first classic IT conflicts between engineer and sales person.
Hollerith’s company focus on census bureaus, initially in the U.S. and eventually around the globe, as well as his company’s focus on insurance underwriters, was the first foray of an IT services company into vertical markets.
A few other tidbits:
Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Company accidentally became the first OEM, ISV, MSP, and integrator… all rolled into one.
With this huge productivity leap of the census tabulations
being completed 8 times faster, Hollerith had inadvertently
discovered the business value of IT and return on investment
(ROI)
Lots of interesting firsts.
Because of Hollerith’s impact on the birth of the IT industry, I’d like to see Worldwide recognition of his birthday each year on February 28th… and of course on February 29th on leap years.
Thanks for helping to celebrate one of the IT industry’s greatest innovators.
Joshua Feinberg
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