1860
Herman Hollerith is born
Herman Hollerith, the inventor whose punched-card tabulating system helped establish mechanised data processing, was born in Buffalo, New York. After working on the 1880 US Census, Hollerith developed an electromechanical system that stored information as patterns of holes punched into cards. His machines were selected to process the 1890 US Census and proved dramatically faster than manual methods. Hollerith later founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which through a series of mergers eventually became IBM.
