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The U.S. Constitution requires a demographic survey at the beginning of every decade.

The census has always been given political significance and will continue to do so. This can be clearly seen in the controversy before the 2020 Census.

However, the importance of the census to the development of the American computer industry is little known. I told this story in my book "Digital Republic: The Unexpected Stories of American Mathematics in History". This history includes the establishment of the first automated data processing company, the Tabulating Machine Company, on December 3, 1896, 125 years ago.

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The only purpose of the census specified in the Constitution is to allocate seats in the House of Representatives. The more populous states get more seats.

The minimal interpretation of the census task only requires reporting the total population of each state. But the census has never been limited to this.

A complicated factor emerged from the beginning, namely, the difference between the constitution of "free men" and "three-fifths of all others." This is the notoriously ill-articulated compromise of the founding fathers between states with a large number of slaves and states with relatively small populations.

The first census in 1790 also made unconstitutional distinctions based on age and gender. In the following decades, many other personal attributes were also explored: occupational status, marital status, education status, birthplace, etc.

As the country develops, each census requires greater effort than the previous one, not only collecting data, but also compiling it into a usable form. The processing of the 1880 census was not completed until 1888.

It has become a numbing, boring, error-prone paperwork, which is rare.

Since the population clearly continues to grow rapidly, those with enough imagination can foresee that processing the 1890 census would indeed be creepy if the procedures were not changed.

John Shaw Billings, a doctor assigned to assist the Census Office in compiling health statistics, closely observed the huge tabulation work required to process the 1880 raw data. He expressed his concerns to Herman Hollerith, a young mechanical engineer who assisted in the census, and recently graduated from the Columbia School of Mines.

On September 23, 1884, the United States Patent Office recorded a submission entitled "The Art of Compiling Statistics" submitted by 24-year-old Hollerith.

Hollerith electric watchmaking machine used in 1902. Picture from the U.S. Census Bureau

By gradually improving the ideas originally submitted, Hollerith will decisively win the 1889 competition to improve the processing of the 1890 census.

The technical solution designed by Hollerith involves a set of mechanical and electrical equipment. The first key innovation is to convert the data on the handwritten census form into a pattern perforated on the card. As Hollerith said, in the revision of his patent application in 1889,

"So, make a hole according to the person, and then make a hole according to the person whether it is male or female, the other records whether it is native or foreign, the other is white or colored, and so on."

This process requires the development of special machines to ensure that holes can be punched accurately and efficiently.

Hollerith then designed a machine to "read" the card by detecting the card with a needle so that only where there is a hole will the needle pass through the card for electrical connection, causing the appropriate counter to advance.

For example, if a card of a white male farmer passes through a machine, the counter for each of these categories will increase by one. The card is strong enough to pass through the card reader multiple times to calculate different categories or check results.

The counting of votes proceeded so quickly that the state numbers required for Congressional funding were certified before late November 1890.

This "mechanical punch card sorter" was used in the 1950 census. Picture from the U.S. Census Bureau

After the census was successful, Hollerith began selling the technology. The company he founded, the Tabulating Machine Company, will become the International Business Machines Corporation-IBM after his retirement. IBM is leading the way in perfecting card technology for recording and tabulating large amounts of data for various purposes.

By the 1930s, many companies used cards for record keeping procedures, such as payroll and inventory. Some data-intensive scientists, especially astronomers, also find these cards handy. By that time, IBM had standardized 80 columns of cards and had developed a key punch machine that had hardly changed in decades.

Card processing became a branch of the powerful computer industry that flourished after World War II, and IBM once became the world's third largest company. Card processing provides a support for purely electronic computers that are faster and more space efficient. These computers now dominate, and the old system leaves little evidence.

A blue IBM punched card. Picture from Gwen/Wikimedia Commons

Those who grow up only know that computers are portable devices that can communicate through finger touch or even voice. They may not be familiar with room-sized computers in the 1950s and 1960s. The main loading method is that data and instructions are Create a card on the keyboard puncher, and then enter the card into the card reader. This remained the default program for many computers until the 1980s.

As computer pioneer Grace Murray Hopper recalled her early career, “In those days, everyone was using punch cards, and they thought they would use punch cards forever. Card."

Hopper has always been an important member of the team that created the first commercially viable general-purpose computer, the Universal Automatic Computer, or UNIVAC, one of the card reader behemoths. In 1951, the first UNIVAC was delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau, which is still eager to improve its data processing capabilities.

No, computer users won't use punch cards forever, but they used them during the Apollo moon landing program and the height of the Cold War. About 100 years later, Hollerith may recognize his direct descendants of the 1890s census mechanism.

This is an updated version of the article originally published on October 15, 2019.

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This article written by David Lindsay Roberts, adjunct professor of mathematics at Prince George Community College, is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original text.

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