Computing · 1890

Hollerith tabulator

Electrical card reading that counted the 1890 US census in record time.

Herman Hollerith's machines sensed holes in cards with pins dipping into mercury, closing circuits that advanced counters. The 1890 population count took about six weeks, versus eight years to tabulate the 1880 census, and his company became part of IBM.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Electromagnetic induction 1831
Jacquard punched cards 1804

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6

Fastest computer in the world Latest: 2.2×10¹⁸ operations per second (2026) Source: Wikipedia: List of fastest computers; Wikipedia: History of supercomputing