Hollerith
Punch card pioneer
Hollerith refers to a system of encoding data on punched cards, developed by Herman Hollerith for the 1890 U.S.
Census.
The Hollerith card—with its 80 columns and 12 rows of punch positions—became the standard format for data processing through most of the 20th century.
The term persists in computing contexts: Hollerith constants, Hollerith format.
Programmers of a certain age remember when 80-character line limits traced back to those cards.
Recording data systematically
- perforationHole punched through something
- chadPunched-out paper bits
- keypunchDevice perforating data cards
- card readerDevice reading encoded strips
round hole · collating · batch processing · data entry · card stock · verifier · card jam · card deck
Official population count
- 1890Late nineteenth-century date
- statisticianProfessional interpreter of numbers
- entrepreneurOne who starts businesses
- engineerTechnical design professional
patentee · American · 19th-century · Columbia University · MIT · mechanization · data processing · electromechanical
Multinational technology corporation
- CTRAd performance metric
- business machinesCommercial workplace apparatus
- mainframeLarge centralized computer system
- information agePeriod defined by data access
Organizing data systematically
- enumerationSequential listing of items
- population countEnumeration of inhabitants
- demographic dataInformation about population characteristics
- statisticsCollected numerical information
data processing · automation · sorting · record-keeping · vital statistics
tabulating
Recording data systematically
- perforationHole punched through something
- chadPunched-out paper bits
- keypunchDevice perforating data cards
card reader · round hole · collating · batch processing · data entry · card stock · verifier · card jam · card deck
census
Official population count
- 1890Late nineteenth-century date
- statisticianProfessional interpreter of numbers
- entrepreneurOne who starts businesses
engineer · patentee · American · 19th-century · Columbia University · MIT · mechanization · data processing · electromechanical · innovation
IBM
Multinational technology corporation
- CTRAd performance metric
- business machinesCommercial workplace apparatus
- mainframeLarge centralized computer system
tabulation
Organizing data systematically
- enumerationSequential listing of items
- population countEnumeration of inhabitants
- demographic dataInformation about population characteristics
statistics · data processing · automation · sorting · record-keeping · vital statistics
- punch cardspunch card, punched card, punch cards, card reader, keypunch
- tabulationcounting, tallying, listing, totaling, summing
HollerithAda Lovelace