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In this building, Herman Hollerith perfected his pioneering punched card tabulating machines -- the forerunners of today's computer systems. Hollerith moved his business here in 1892 while his early machines were at work on the U.S. census of 1890, the first major application of data processing equipment.
Later he developed more automatic forms of the machines on this site employed by railroads, insurance companies, steel mills, governments and other organizations in the U.S. and abroad, Hollerith machines revolutionized the way information was processed.
In 1911, Hollerith sold his tabulating machine company to the firm that became IBM. The company continued to use this building as a punched card plant until just before World War II. |