--- title: The punched card tabulator | daily.dev description: Herman Hollerith, a mining engineer, invented a punched card tabulating machine to automate the labor-intensive US census process. Building on earlier punched... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-punched-card-tabulator-ukhoseddx twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The punched card tabulator | daily.dev og:description: Herman Hollerith, a mining engineer, invented a punched card tabulating machine to automate the labor-intensive US census process. Building on earlier punched... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-punched-card-tabulator-ukhoseddx og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ukHOSeDdx.png og:image:alt: The punched card tabulator og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The punched card tabulator **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Herman Hollerith, a mining engineer, invented a punched card tabulating machine to automate the labor-intensive US census process. Building on earlier punched card concepts from Jacquard's looms and Babbage's Analytical Engine, Hollerith patented his data storage method starting in 1884. In a 1888 Census Office competition, his machine dramatically outperformed two rivals, completing the tabulation task in 72.5 hours versus 144.5 and 100.5 hours, winning the contract to process the 1890 census and eventually laying the foundation for IBM. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Time Clock Has Stood The Test Of Time](https://daily.dev/posts/the-time-clock-has-stood-the-test-of-time-kq1iul4k8) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Four Colour Theorem: The first time machines mogged mathematicians](https://daily.dev/posts/the-four-colour-theorem-the-first-time-machines-mogged-mathematicians-stcf8d9zu) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [IEEE Rewards Sections for High Voter Turnout](https://daily.dev/posts/ieee-rewards-sections-for-high-voter-turnout-c2ab2o6vm) · IEEE Spectrum · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Quantum Teleportation Scales to 100 Parallel Paths](https://daily.dev/posts/quantum-teleportation-scales-to-100-parallel-paths-zsprvweuo) · IEEE Spectrum · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ibm](https://daily.dev/tags/ibm), [#data-processing](https://daily.dev/tags/data-processing), [#computing-history](https://daily.dev/tags/computing-history) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-punched-card-tabulator-ukhoseddx) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The punched card tabulator","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-punched-card-tabulator-ukhoseddx","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-punched-card-tabulator-ukhoseddx"},"datePublished":"2026-08-13T13:20:39.977Z","dateModified":"2026-08-13T13:21:02.704Z","description":"Herman Hollerith, a mining engineer, invented a punched card tabulating machine to automate the labor-intensive US census process. 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