Thursday, February 08, 2007

Hollerith 1890 Census Tabulator

Hollerith 1890 Census Tabulator: "Herman Hollerith's 1890 tabulating machine is shown on the webpage and from IBM a color photo.
hollerith census - Google Search

The results of a tabulation are displayed on the clock-like dials. A sorter is on the right. On the tabletop below the dials are a Pantographic card punch (explained below) on left and the card reading station ('press') on the right, in which metal pins pass through the holes, making contact with little wells of mercury, completing an electrical circuit (according to Austrian [44], when workers wanted some time off, they would suck the mercury out of the wells with medicine droppers and squirt it into the spitoon).

All of these devices are fed manually, one card at a time, but the tabulator and sorter are electrically coupled."

hollerith census - Google Image Search

used in UK from 1911 until the coming of computers
which is why there ae no enumerators books for the 1911 census

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