On 8 January 1899, Herman Hollerith, a German-American inventor, received US Patent No. 395,782 for “Art of compiling statistics”.
Hollerith’s invention addressed the census tabulation bottleneck. The 1880 US Census took about 7 years to finish tabulating by hand. With population growth, the next census risked falling behind.
His idea was to standardize answers so machines could do the counting. Each person’s data was encoded on a punch card. A tabulating machine read the holes and advanced counters to produce totals and breakdowns.
It was used for the 1890 Census and sharply accelerated tabulation, proving that large datasets could be processed mechanically. That mindset became a foundation for modern information processing.
Hollerith’s tabulating business became part of the 1911 merger that formed the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), later renamed International Business Machines (IBM) in 1924.
| Country | Kind | No. | Published | Title | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US | Patent | 395,782 | 08.01.1899 | Art of compiling statistics |
Last updated on 18 February 2026