1860-1929

American Inventor, Businessman and Statistical Engineer

Herman Hollerith's invention of a machine able to tabulate information encoded in the form of holes punched in paper cards dramatically speeded up the 1890 United States census, and laid the foundation for the explosion of information processing in the twentieth century. The business Hollerith founded in 1896, the Tabulating Machine Company, later became a major component of the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

The child of German immigrants, Hollerith was born in Buffalo, New York, on February 29, 1860. He entered college at age 15, attending both City College of New York and Columbia School of Mines. He graduated from the School of Mines in 1879 with a degree in engineering.

That same year Hollerith moved to Washington, D.C., to accept a position as a special agent in the United States Census Office. The Census Office was responsible for counting the country's population...