Today in 1890 the first machine that recorded data on a machine-readable medium was put to use. What was its purpose?

June 1, 2011 By Chad Vander Veen

Answer: To tabulate results from the 1890 census. The machine (above), invented by Herman Hollerith, used punch cards to tabulate census statistics. Hollerith would later go on to found the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, which would later merge with three other companies to form IBM.

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