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Antique Data Processing Machines

Punched Card Tabulating Machines

Hollerith Electric Tabulator, US Census Bureau, Washington, DC, 1908,

 Photograph by Waldon Fawcett. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-45687.

Mid-1880s to 1900
The first commercial data processing machines were punched card tabulating systems. Herman Hollerith
(1860-1929) worked at the US Census Bureau during 1879-82. While there he began designing machines
that could reduce the labor and time that would be required to process the data that would be collected in
the 1890 Census. In 1884, Hollerith applied for his first patent, almost 80 years before the first solid state
calculator, and 72 years before the first conference call services. He proposed to store information in the
form of holes punched through a strip of paper. "Holes punched in a strip of paper were sensed by pins or
pointers making contact through the holes to a drum. The completion of an electric circuit through a hole
advanced a counter on a dial." (G. D. Austrian, Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information
Processing, 1982, p. 23)

Hollerith switched to punched cards in 1886 and obtained a second patent in 1887.
Punched paper cards had previously been used to program silk looms and difference
engines. (James Essinger, Jacquard's, 2004) The photograph to the right shows one of
several models of c. 1800 punched card silk looms in the Musée des Tissus in Lyon,
France. Also, punched paper rolls had been used in player pianos.

The Hollerith Electric Tabulating System consisted of punching, reading, sorting, and tabulating
machines.

Early Hollerith Tabulating Machines and Card Readers

The tabulator was a counting machine. It kept a running count of the number of cards with a hole
punched in a particular position. It had 40 counters and hence could simultaneously count the number of
cards with holes punched in up to 40 positions. An experienced operator could tabulate 50 to 80 cards a
minute. There was no printer. The results of a tabulation had read on the counter dials and written down
by hand.

Click on image to
enlarge
Description

The Hollerith system stored data in the form of round holes in a 45-column card.

Hollerith electric tabulating system, including tabulating machine, card reader,

pantograph punching machine, and sorting machine, 1890, National Museum of
American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Hollerith electrical tabulating machine with card reader and sorting machine. Scientific
American, Aug. 30, 1890.

Hollerith card reader, 1890. In order to count or sort cards, cards were inserted
 manually into the reader one at a time. Cards were read by pins that passed through the
holes to complete electric circuits. When a pin passed through a hole, the pointer on
the appropriate dial in front of the operator advanced one unit. The operator in the
photograph at the top of this page is holding a card in the reader with his right
hand. The recording dials can be seen in front of the operator.

Dial on Hollerith electric tabulating machine, 1890. "The counting is done on a dial
which has two hands. One hand records one division, while every complete revolution
moves a device which in turn causes the second hand to turn, which counts one
hundred. In this way the dial will register up to ten thousand." (Christian Union, Aug.
6, 1892)

The Hollerith electric tabulating machine could be used with a keyboard rather than a
card reader. In this illustration, a clerk working on the 1890 Census is manually
entering the number of people in each household. This was done in order quickly to
determine total population and its distribution among families of different sizes.
Scientific American, Aug. 30, 1890.

Hollerith electric tabulating machine, 1902. Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Hollerith Electric Tabulator, US Census Bureau, Washington, DC, 1908, Photograph

by Waldon Fawcett. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-45687. This image is a detail
from the photograph at top of this page.

Hollerith Integrating Tabulator, Tabulating Machine Co.

Early Hollerith Card Punch

Until 1900, the only type of card punch was the pantograph. The pantograph operator decided where each
hole should be punched, and punched one hole at a time.

Pantograph card punch. A blank card was placed on the metal frame located at the
middle of the machine. At the front of the machine was a large replica of the card. To
punch a hole in the card, the operator moved the handle over the corresponding hole in
the replica and then pressed the handle. This can be seen clearly in the next image.
 Data from 1890 Census forms were punched onto cards using a pantograph. Scientific
American, Aug. 30, 1890.

Census worker using pantograph card punch. No date. US Census Bureau.

Early Hollerith Sorter

The card reader was used not only to count cards but also to sort them into as many as twenty-four
categories (e.g., by country of birth) at a time. Based on the location of holes in the card, the lid on one of
the 24 sorter bins would open automatically, and the operator would put the card in that bin. The cards in
different bins could then be tabulated separately for various purposes.

Hollerith sorting machine, 1890.

Hollerith machines were used as early as 1886 to tabulate census and mortality data. Hollerith then won
contracts to supply tabulating equipment for the 1890 US Census, for agricultural statistics, and for census
work in a number of other countries.

Martin Campbell-Kelly states that "Initially, the commercial use of tabulating machines was on a very
small scale--a few machines were supplied for the compilation of insurance and railroad statistics."
("Punched-Card Machinery," in W. Aspray, ed., Computing Before Computers, 1990, pp. 135-36)
Hollerith's first commercial customer was the Prudential Life Insurance Co. Two machines were installed
at Prudential in 1891. Yates reports that "Initially, the insurance firms adopted tabulating technology
simply to speed up manual processes of sorting, counting, and adding numerical data, and directly
(through in-house innovations) and indirectly (through market decisions of firms and professional
associations) encouraged developments that improved those functions." (JoAnne Yates, "Early
Interactions between the Life Insurance and Computer Industries," 1996.)

Next, machines were installed at the New York Central railroad in 1895. "The Central alone processed
nearly 4 million freight waybills a year--each one by hand. If a punched card could take the place of the
written waybill transcript, as Hollerith proposed, the giant railroad could chart its freight movements--and
freight revenues--on a weekly rather than a monthly basis. It could tell on a nearly current basis how many
hundreds of tons of freight were moving East--or West; which of hundreds of stations along its lines were
profitable; where freight cars should be sent or returned; what freight agents were being paid. It would
give the railroad a much firmer command of its far-flung business." (Austrian, pp. 124-25) The New York
Central stopped using Hollerith machines after only a few months, but Hollerith soon convinced the
company to try a new model and then obtained a contract.

Hollerith's initial tabulators increased running totals displayed on dials by one unit at a time. To handle the
needs of railroad accounting, Hollerith developed integrating tabulators that used a row of adding
machines, which simultaneously added multi-digit numbers in each of several fields on a given card (e.g.,
65,000 pounds of freight, 325 miles, etc.) to separate running totals. However, other than the New York
Central, no railroad used Hollerith machines until several more years had passed.

In 1896, Hollerith incorporated his business as the Tabulating Machine Co. This company won the
contract to supply tabulating equipment for the 1900 US Census. Harper's Weekly (Aug. 19, 1899)
published a discussion and photographs of the Hollerith machines that were to be used in the 1900
Census, which you can view by clicking here.

Tabulating Machine Co. and IBM Keypunches, 1900 to 1940

Numeric key punch, The Tabulating Machine Co., New York City. A similar
keypunch, which was patented in 1901 (US Patent No. 682,297), was used for the
1900 US Census. These machines punched round holes in 45-column cards.

Same as preceding.

IBM Type 1 mechanical key punch. This machine, which was marketed by IBM in the
late 1930s, is similar to the one in the photographs immediately above. However, this
machine punched rectangular holes in 80-column cards. Courtesy of Florence
Andrews.
IBM Type 1 mechanical key punch. This is the same model shown in the immediately
preceding photograph. This image from a late 1930s IBM publication identifies the
parts of the machine.

Clerk with keypunch, 1920. Source: National Archives.

Census worker using IBM Type 1 mechanical key punch, 1940. Source: U.S. Census
Bureau.

Hollerith, the Tabulating Machine Co., and its successors did not sell the machines they produced. They
leased them to customers. According to Campbell-Kelly, "Punched-card machinery was expensive to rent
and consequently was only used, at first, by very large organizations that could make good use of its
ability to make short work of a large volume of transactions." (1990, p.145) Also Hollerith insisted on the
exclusive right to supply cards, on which he earned a profit, "often using the argument that quality control
was critical to ensure that his machines did not jam or malfunction." (James W. Cortada, Before the
Computer, 1993, p. 54)

1901 to 1910

In 1903, Marshall Field began using Hollerith machines for department store sales analysis. In 1904,
Pennsylvania Steel Co. began using Hollerith machines for cost accounting based on data on labor and
machine inputs used in manufacturing. After 1904, commercial "use increased greatly, particularly by
railroad companies. By 1908, the Tabulating Machine Company had about thirty customers, including
railroads, utilities, manufacturers, and government agencies. Thereafter the revenues (and therefore the
customer base) grew at the rate of about 20 percent every six months." (M. Campbell-Kelly and W.
Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, 1996, p. 46) For example, at least six railroads
began using Hollerith machines during 1903-05. Other early customers were Eastman Kodak, National
Tube, American Sheet and Tin Plate, Western Electric, and Yale and Towne. (Cortada, p. 54) In 1911, the
Tabulating Machine Company had approximately one hundred customers. An employee of one of those
customers, the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, stated that "These tabulating machines
are used by many concerns for statistical reports and cost accounting. I believe that the New England
Telephone and Telegraph Company is the first company to use these machines for strictly bookkeeping
purposes." (New England Telephone Topics, 1911)

In 1903, Simon North became Director of the US Census Bureau. North set out to break Hollerith's
monopoly over supply of tabulating machinery to the Census Bureau. Conflict between the Census
Bureau and Hollerith led to the removal of all Hollerith machines from the Census Bureau, which turned
for the next few years to slower tabulating equipment supplied by Charles F. Pidgin. In 1907, the Census
Bureau began to sponsor work by James Powers to develop an alternative to the Hollerith system. The
Census Bureau gave Powers the right to patent his inventions. Full scale competition for Hollerith began
in 1910, when Power won a majority of the contract for the 1910 US Census, while Hollerith won a
minority. For a photograph of a 1910 Powers key punch, see Campbell-Kelly (1990, p. 134).

The back of this photo reads "The newly invented tabulating machine with automatic
counters for the US Census work" and is dated 1908. The photo is embossed
"Copyright 190[ ] by Waldon Fawcett, Washington, D.C." We do not know which
tabulating technology this machine incorporated. Notice that the first photo on this
webpage, which was also taken by Waldon Fawcett in 1908, shows a Hollerith
machine.

1911 to 1921
In 1911, Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Co. merged with other companies to form the Computing
Tabulating Recording Co. (C-T-R). Powers set up Powers Accounting Machine Corp. in 1911. Yates
(1996) reports that "insurance firms were among the earliest and most enthusiastic purchasers of the
competing Powers printing and then alphabetical tabulators when they came on the market between 1915
and the early 1920s. In fact, in 1919 the largest British life insurance firm (the Prudential Assurance
Company, unrelated to the Prudential Insurance Company in the U.S.) intervened directly, buying the
British Powers agency and worked with it to develop the first successful alphabetical tabulating and
printing machines; this technology was soon modified and introduced by Powers in America."
The Scoville Mfg. Co. ordered a Powers punched-card tabulating machine in 1918. (JoAnne Yates,
Control through Communication, 1989, p. 188) Powers "developed a range of commercial punched-card
machinery considerably superior to that offered by C-T-R, in particular offering a printing tabulator that
was far better suited to commercial applications." (Campbell-Kelly, 1990, p. 136)

Most of the equipment in the following table is probably from the Powers Accounting Machine Corp.
unless it is identified as from the Tabulating Machine Co.
First Automatic Feed Tabulator, Tabulating Machine Co.

Tabulating machine, Census Bureau, Washington, DC, photograph by Harris & Ewing,
1917.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

ID: hec 06425. Repro. No: LC-DIG-hec-06425

Tabulating machine, Census Bureau, Washington, DC, photograph by Harris & Ewing,
1917.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

ID: hec 08005. Repro. No: LC-DIG-hec-08005

Tabulating machine, Census Bureau, Washington, DC, photograph by Harris & Ewing,
1917.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

ID: hec 06426. Repro. No: LC-DIG-hec-06426

Tabulating machine, Census Bureau, Washington, DC, photograph by Harris & Ewing,
1919.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

ID: hec 11840. Repro. No: LC-DIG-hec-11840.

Powers Tabulator Printer, 1921.

Front and Back of Tabulator-Printer, Bureau of Sup. and Accts., Navy Department,
 Washington, DC, photographs by Harris & Ewing, 1917.

Compare to the Powers Tabulator Printer immediately above.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

Top: ID: hec 09752. Repro. No: LC-DIG-hec-09752
Bottom: ID: hec 09751. Repro. No: LC-DIG-hec-09751

Sorting machine, Census Bureau, Washington, DC, photograph by Harris & Ewing,
1919.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

ID: hec 11839. Repro. No: LC-DIG-hec-11839.

Thomas J. Watson became president of C-T-R in 1914 and set up a research department. C-T-R soon had
improved products that were competitive with those of Powers. C-T-R had more than three hundred
customers for Hollerith machines by 1915. (Cortada, p. 55) By the end of World War I, "almost every
large insurance company and railway used these [C-T-R] machines, with only minor sales going to
Powers....C-T-R's card manufacturing facility in Washington, D.C., was producing 80 million cards per
month, and in 1918, a second plant in Dayton began generating another 30 million [cards per
month]....Best, but limited, evidence suggests that these volumes represented roughly 95 percent of the
market for cards worldwide in 1918." (Cortada, p. 58) In 1920, C-T-R introduced its first printer, a
printer-lister that could print the data contained on cards as well as the results of tabulations.

As to other early suppliers of data processing equipment, in 1895 John K. Gore developed tabulating
machines that were used exclusively by the Prudential Insurance Co. (Cortada, p. 59) Cortada states:
"The other major effort, and one slightly competitive to Powers and Hollerith, was that of the Peirce
Patents Company. Formed before 1915, it was a tabulating system firm that sold to American utility
companies. Its product consisted of a card punch machine, a distributing device, and an automatic ledger
machine, collectively called the Royden System of Perforated Cards. It was used to generate a bill, post
debits and credits to ledgers, and generate monthly statements....It never became a factor, and in 1921, C-
T-R purchased the patents and assets of what was then known as the Peirce Accounting Machine
Company." (Cortada, p. 60) Yates (1996) reports that "Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the largest
insurance firm in the world, contracted with an independent inventor, J. Royden Peirce, in an ultimately
unsuccessful attempt to develop customized alphabetical printing tabulator equipment for that firm."

1922 to 1954

Sorting machine. Census Bureau, 1922.

 Four women working on Hollerith tabulating machines, Milk Marketing Board,
England, 1934. "Information about the number of gallons and rates went onto the
producers' cards....[I]t was not until the 1960s that the Board got rid of the last of the
Hollerith machines. (Source: Hultun Picture Co. and IRIS Publishing Ltd.)

In 1924, Powers began selling a line of alphabetic machines in addition to its line of numeric machines. In
1927, Powers merged with Remington Typewriter, Rand Kardex, and the Dalton Adding Machine Co. to
form Remington Rand, Inc. The 1928 catalog of Remington Rand offered four Powers machines, all of
which were electric: an automatic punch, a typewriter key punch that operated in combination with a
Remington bookkeeping machine, a speed sorter, and an alphanumeric automatic tabulator. Subsequently
the Powers name was dropped in the US.

Remington Rand Powers Tabulating Machines, late 1920s and 1944

Powers Automatic Punch, 1928.

Powers Typewriter Key Punch, 1928.

Powers Speed Sorter, 1928.

Powers Sorter. The nameplate on the sorter reads "Property of Powers Accounting
Machine Co." Because the nameplate does not refer to Remington Rand, this machine
presumably was made prior to 1928. Early Office Museum Archives.

Powers Alphabetic Tabulator, 1928. Printed both words and numbers from punched
cards.

Remington Rand Alphabetical Tabulator, 1944.

In 1924, C-T-R changed its name to International Business Machines Corp. (IBM).

Beginning in 1925, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad used three key punches, one sorter,
and one tabulator with printing attachment to compile statistics on "freight car mileage, separated as
between box, open, and miscellaneous, loaded and empty, east and west, weight of cars, weight of
contents, by districts, and by directions; time on road; caboose mileage; total mileage by individual
engine;...and all of the information or any part of it separated as between classes of service. The D.L.& W.
also used this tabulating equipment to audit the amounts received from other railroads for use of D.L.&
W. freight cars and the amounts the D.L.& W. paid to other railways for use of their freight cars. This
work required operators to punch 240,000 tabulator cards a month. The data punched on cards were the
output of computations using Comptometers. (V. D. Thayer, "How the D.L. & W. Uses Tabulating
Machines," Railway Age, Aug. 17, 1929, pp. 429-33)

In 1927, IBM advertised several electric machines: key punches, sorting machines, tabulating machines,
and accounting machines that added data and printed data and output. In the late 1920s, "although
punched-card machines were important and pervasive, the industry was quite a small one....For example,
by the end of the 1920s IBM had only about three thousand customers in America." (Campbell-Kelly,
1990, p. 137)

Yates (1996) reports that "By the end of the 1920s IBM had purchased Peirce's patents and introduced its
own alphabetical printing capability. Having caught up with and surpassed Remington Rand, it stayed
safely ahead (establishing a sales advantage of about eight to one in the 1930s) through the rest of the
tabulator era, at the beginning of the 1950s controlling 90% of all installed punched-card equipment in the
U.S. In line with this general trend, many insurance firms, including such giants as Metropolitan Life and
the American Prudential as well as many smaller firms, acquired large installations of IBM tabulating
equipment by the 1930s." In 1938, the Social Security office in Baltimore had 222 IBM card punches and
79 card sorters.

IBM Tabulating Machines, late 1930s-1954

IBM card punches, late 1930s.

IBM Motor Driven Key Punch Type 15, late 1930s.

IBM Alphabetic Duplicating Key Punch Type 31, late 1930s.

IBM Type 31 alphabetic duplicating key punch. This key punch had a conventional 4-
row QWERTY typewriter-style keyboard with numbers and letters, but no shift key.
To the right of the typewriter keyboard was a separate numerical keyboard. This
machine is in an exhibit at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC

Students using IBM Type 31 alphabetic duplicating key punches. Source: The Source:
School of Commerce, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, OSU Archives #882.
IBM Alphabetic Duplicating Printing Punch, late 1930s.

IBM Horizontal Sorter Type 80 used on Unemployment Census, 1934.

IBM Horizontal Sorter Type 80, late 1930s.

IBM Type 80 horizontal sorter.

IBM Type 80 horizontal sorter. This machine is in an exhibit at the National Museum
of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC

IBM 3-Bank Sorting Printing Counting Machine, 1937, from UK publication.

Courtesy of the Museum of Business History and Technology, Wilmington, DE.

IBM Vertical Sorter Type 71, late 1930s.

IBM Electric Accounting Machine Type 92, c. 1940.

IBM Electric Accounting Machines Type 285 and Type 297, late 1930s.
Accounting Department using IBM Tabulating Machines, late 1930s.

The center machine appears to be an IBM Type 512 reproducing punch, which copied
holes already punched in one card, or one set of cards, into another group of cards.
The machine to the right appears to be an IBM Type 405 Alphabetic Accounting
Machine, which had a printer. Source: The Source: School of Commerce, Oregon
State University, Corvallis, OR, OSU Archives #882.

Tabulating Card Punching Office, War Department, Washington, DC, 1942. All the
women punching cards are African American. The supervisor in the aisle is white.
Source: Washington Post.

U.S. Military Office with Tabulating Machines, probably 1940s. Same room as that in
the following photograph.

U.S. Military Office with Key Punches, probably 1940s. Same room as that in the
preceding photograph.

IBM Automatic Electric Key Punch, 1947, from UK publication. Courtesy of the
Museum of Business History and Technology, Wilmington, DE.

IBM Junior Rolling Total Tabulator, 1951, from UK publication. Courtesy of the
Museum of Business History and Technology, Wilmington, DE.

IBM Horizontal Sorter, 1951, from UK publication. Courtesy of the Museum of

Business History and Technology, Wilmington, DE.

IBM Vertical Sorters, 1951, from UK publication. Courtesy of the Museum of

Business History and Technology, Wilmington, DE.

IBM Typewriter Keypunch, from UK publication. Courtesy of the Museum of

Business History and Technology, Wilmington, DE.

Betty Perino uses a keypunch machine to transfer information from income tax returns
to tabulator cards, IRS, Chicago, IL, 1954.

Based on an internet search, it seems likely that this is Mrs. Betty A. Perino (1921-
2014), who became a long-time resident of Virden, IL, which is 226 miles from
downtown Chicago.
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