Hollerith tabulator
device · 1890 · Electric age
An electromechanical machine for processing census data from punched cards.
What it is made of
- Punched card reading press — has part. Needles pass through the holes and close the circuit in mercury.
- Electromechanical dial counters — has part. Dials that count the pulses.
- Relay — has part. Relays controlled the sorting box.
Principles and materials it uses
- Punched card — uses. The 1890 census data was encoded on punched cards.
- Cast iron — is made of. The casing is cast iron.
- Copper — is made of. The contacts are copper pins dipping into mercury.
- Electromagnetism — uses. The counters click with electromagnets.
Where it is used
- Statistics — is used in. Processing censuses.
History: what it evolved from and what it influenced
- Mainframe — evolved into. IBM grew out of Hollerith’s company.
- Database — evolved into. Processing large datasets began with tabulators.
What it is a kind of
- Computing device — is a kind of. A data-processing machine.