1860-1929. US inventor of a mechanical
tabulating machine, the first device for data
processing. Hollerith's tabulator was widely
publicized after being successfully used in
the 1890 census. The firm he established, the
Tabulating Machine Company, was later one of
the founding companies of International
Business Machines (IBM). After attending the
Columbia University School of Mines,
Hollerith worked on the 1880 US census and
witnessed the huge task of processing so much
information. In 1882 he became an instructor
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
where he developed his machine for counting
and collating census data.