JF Ptak Science Books
This is sort of what the future of tabulation looked like in 1902--except that the people in this year were already living in this tabulating future, surprisingly already a dozen years old at this point. The cover illustrates an article on the machinery used in the production of statistics and tables and general data organization by the great work by Herman Hollerith, who had already performed this function for the U.S. Census of 1890. (Hollerith had offices at Wisconsin Avenue and the C & O Canal, in Georgetown, D.C., about ten blocks from where my old store used to be at Volta & 33rd.)
The 1880 census had cost about $6 million and took 9 years to tabulate; the 1890 census using the Hollerith machines cost $10 million and took seven years. The main focus of many in government was the cost differential—not the incredible amounts of new controllable information. The rent of the Hollerith machines was only $750,000 for the conduct of the entire census, so the differential must’ve been in the extra utility costs (for electricity, for example, which was used for the first time to run the tabulators) and for the small army of statisticians and data entry people. Be that as it may, the government was not amused, particularly when Hollerith figured that he had actually saved the government $5 million. The two parties left each other grumbling, though the roar of the trickle down from the Hollerith success drowned it out. The tabulating system was quickly exported, and large private concerns in the U.S. saw a savior in the system that would soon rescue them from the sea of paper in which they were beginning to drown. The Hollerith company did very, very well for itself, and soon merged with three other companies (in 1911) to ease the burden of success. The resulting company was called the Computing-Tabulating-Research Company (CTR), which after a short while became the International Business Machine Corporation (IBM).
[Source of abstract: Publications Indexed for Engineering, PIE, volume 4.]
And the article from the Scientific American, as follows. (It is worth pointing out that a few hundred pages following is an article about William Terrel's fantastic tide-predicting machine, a beast of a sicentific instrument that weighed in at 2,500 pounds and functioned slendidly for 30+ years...)
"The Mechanical Work of the Twelfth Census" by Edward W. Byrn
[Text via Internet Archive]
THE MECHANICAL WORK OF THE TWELFTH CENSUS.
BT EDWARD W. BYRN
Now that the Census Bureau has heen made a per-
manent branch of the government, it attains the dignity
and importance which its merits deserve. A popular
impression prevailing among a large number of peo-
ple is that the main part of the work of the Census is
the taking of it, that is to say, the gathering of the
data. That nothing could be more erroneous is evi-
denced by the fact that by legislative enactment a
single month only was allowed for the taking of the
Twelfth Census, while two years were given within
which to tabulate the data. The data collected can
have no meaning or value to the legislator and the
student of sociology and political economy until class-
ified into categories which form a basis for compari-
sons and conclusions. This is the real work of the
Census Bureau, and it is of enormous proportions.
The last decade of the nineteenth century added to the
wealth of our country, according to Mulhall, twenty-
five billion dollars, which is estimated to be more than
the nation was able to save from the discovery by
Columbus to the breaking out of the civil war. It also
added immensely to the growth of our country in pro-
ductive resources, in population and in problems
sociological and economic. Upon undertaking their
work therefore the officials of the Twelfth Census
found confronting them such a demand for further
data and more light affecting these interests, that new
and extraordinary instrumentalities were invoked to
shorten the labor, extend the tabulations, and increase
the accuracy, speed, and effectiveness of the clerical
force in separating, segregating, and classifying into
categories the vast amount of data. The machine has
been adapted to this work and made to take the place
of the erring eye, the faulty memory, or the careless
hand to such an extent that £o-day the Census Office
presents the appearance and busy hum of a vast ma-
chine shop rather than that of a great counting-house^
Electricity has lent its expedition and subtle force to
supplement human service, and
the clerical work, largely eman-
cipated from the errors of the
personal equation, is brought
under the control of physical
laws. Pacts and figures have
thus within an incredibly short
space of time been presented in
such an array of categories and
permutations as to give the stu-
dent quick and convenient in-
sight as to what this avalanche
of figures means and what
prophecy and suggestion they
hold for the future. It is a
splendid tribute to the executive
ability of Director Merriam and
to the experience and foresight
of Chief Statisticians Powers,
King, and Hunt, as well as evi-
dence of the value of the in-
vention as a factor in the world's
work..."l
"...now, in a group, brought down, and those which are in
line with holes in the card will descend through said
holes and, by touching the mercury below, will close
so many separate electric circuits. Those pins which
do not find holes in the card below them do not pass to
contact with the mercury and do not close their in-
dividual electric circuits. Each pin and its mercury
cup are terminals of a separate electric circuit passing
through an electro-magnet controlling a counter or reg-
ister. The pin's are carried in a frame known as a pin-
box. It will thus be seen that the so-called pin-box is
a sort of electric permutation circuit controller, and
that the circuit closed through any one counter or reg-
ister will be determined by one position of a hole in a
card, and another circuit through another counter by
another position of a hole. This gives the machine a
mechanical selective action and constitutes its mode
of thinking, as it were.
There are two kinds of punching machines. One is
for population and the other for farms. In the farm
punch the card is automatically moved through the
machine under the punches, which correspond in num-
ber, to the ten numerals, with one extra punch. In the
population punch the card is held fixedly in a holder,
and a swinging lever arm bears at the handle end a
position-finding stylus, which has below it a large key-
board of holes exactly corresponding in number, posi-
tion, and grouping with the number, position, and
grouping borne by the blank card. When the stylus
is depressed into a certain hole in the key-board a
punch, about mid-way of the lever, finds and punches a
hole in the exact spot on the card corresponding to the
hole on the key-board into which the stylus was de-
pressed. Simpler and more recent is the farm card.
In punching the spaces indicating dollars the units
are, for economy sake, disregarded; thus 400 means
$4,000; 150 means $1,500, and so on. The three col-
umns to the left of the card simply divide the farms,
their incomes and products, into ten groups, the first
column giving ten sizes of farms, the second giving
work. JThe Uol-
punching and tabula-
tion had its inception in the preceding censusJ and
its fundamental principles and instrumentalities were
described and illustrated in the issue of this paper
of August 30, 1890. i£he system, however, has been
greatly improved and extended to meet the larger want
of the present time. The two main features of the
system are, first, a punched card, and, secondly, means
for transferring its legend mechanically to registers
which classify it into groups or categories and add
the units thereof to form sum totals for the groups^"
The punched card varies somewhat in size and shape
according as it is for population or agriculture. Gen-
erally speaking, it is from 5 to 7 inches long and 3
inches wide, and until its values are explained and un-
derstood it is a very insignificant and blind piece of
paste-board. It stands between the enumerator's re-
turn sheet and the tabulating machine, and is the
means by which the tabulating machine is made to
mechanically discriminate in classifying the data
borne by the card into groups, classes, or categories.
The punchings in the card are not for the purpose of
a public record, but are intermediary instrumentalities
and the positions of the punched holes in the card
mean everything to the tabulating machine. By the
special location of a hole within the limits of certain
boundary lines on the card it means one thing, and in
another position it means another thing, and it is this
position of a punched hole in a card that enables the
tabulating machine to afterward transfer the value of
that particular position of a hole on the card to a
gang of counters and registers classifying the data
into groups and adding the totals. It is done in this
way: The card having been punched with holes to
signify by their positions on the card the information
contained on the written enumerator's schedule, the
said card is put in a tabulating machine, where it acts
as a stop diaphragm between a multiplicity of little
spring-seated pins above the card and a corresponding
series of mercury cups below the card. The pins are
ten sources of income, and the third ten sizes of in-
come, which are arbitrarily indicated by the figures
and interpreted by an explanatory key.
The card having been punched, is then placed in a
tabulating machine. The front view of a group of
four tabulating sections shows the pin-box, and the
handle for raising and lowering it being shown on
the right. The rear view illustrates the quadrantal
segments of electro-magnets arranged in rear and above
the adding wheels. This view shows also the multi-
plicity of electric cables connected to the magnets and
leading to the pin-box. It is not practicable within the
limits of space available to describe in detail, the tab-
ulating and adding devices. It must suffice to say
that a punched card is placed below the pin-box on the
subjacent table surface bearing the mercury cups
shown on the right of Pig. 5, and, the pin-box being
brought down by the operator by means of the handle
bar, the card automatically selects its counters or add-
ing wheels as hereinbefore described. To explain how
the machine adds, i. e., how a group of units is at one
operation transferred to the adding wheel, reference
is made to the rear view. For each adding device
there is a quadrantal series of nine electro-magnets ar-
ranged in an arc about the adding wheels. A radial
arm oscillates or swings about the center of the adding
wheels, and in its sweep a pawl carried by it is made
to turn the adding wheels any number of spaces ac-
cording to the number to be added. This is accom-
plished by causing the turning pawl of the sw^ng arm
to act on the adding wheel sooner or later in the sweep
of the arm. If it acts immediately on starting it turns
the adding wheel nine spaces and adds 9. If it does
not act until it has passed the fifth magnet it turns
the wheel four spaces and adds 4. The timing of the
action of the pawl on the adding wheel as the arm
sweeps over the same is effected by . the segmental
series of electro-magnets as follows: Each magnet is
connected to the electrodes of the pin-box, and the
selection of a particular magnet in the curved series
is controlled by the selective action of the punched
card at the pin box, which is made to close a circuit
through any one of the magnets of the curved seg-
ment. Such magnet when energized is made to release
a trip pawl that is thrown into the path of the swing-
ing arm and, striking an attachment thereon, causes
the turning pawl of the swinging arm to engage an
adding wheel and turn it a greater or less number of
spaces according to the position of the magnet in the
segmental series which has been energized.
A card to be tabulated on one of these machines is
required to be placed by the operator beneath the pin-
box, the pin-box depressed and the card then removed
by hand. If the card is properly tabulated a little bell
rings simultaneously with the depression of the pin-
box. If a card has not been properly punched, the
machine gives notice of the same so that the error
may be corrected. When the card is removed, it Is
placed by the operator's hand in one of a series of com-
partments in a case for further classification, and to
facilitate this work the pin-box is made, through elec-
trical connections, to automatically open the proper
door of the compartment into which the card is to
be stored.
There are five different kinds of punched cards used
in the work of the Census Office. In the agricultural
division there is, in addition to the farm card herein
illustrated, another card known as the crop card. In
the population and vital statistics divisions there are
three different cards, namely, the individual card, the
family card, and the mortality card. In round numbers
there have been employed in the whole work of the
census something over 6,000,000 farm cards, 115,000,000
crop cards, 76,000,000 individual cards, 16,000,000 fam-
ily cards, and 1,300,000 mortality cards. The average
number of farm cards tabulated by the machine above
described was, for the month of June, 1901, a little
over 5,000 daily. This average has subsequently been
raised to over 8,000 daily. The crop cards are handled
more expeditiously, and 10,000 is the daily average.
The division of agriculture employs twelve of the large
farm-card machines and eighty-
six of the smaller crop-card ma-
chines.
The latest development of the
Hollerith System is the auto-
matic machine, in which the
work of separately placing each
card beneath the pin-box, depres-
sing the pin-box, and removing
the card, is performed automat-
ically by a machine instead of by
hand. This automatic machine
is operated by an electric motor
supplied by current from the
cable overhead. The cards are
fed in a bunch to the top of the
machine, the pin-box occupies a
vertical instead of a horizontal
plane, and the mercury cups are
replaced by spring jacks. The
machine itself successively feeds
each card to the pin-box or circuit controller and tabu-
lates its data automatically. If an improperly punched
or distorted card happens to be in the lot it is automat-
ically thrown out into a special receptacle for it, while
the properly registered cards go to their own compart-
ments. These machines have been used experimentally
in the census work, and the following has been re-
ported as the result of tests, viz., that in six and a half
hours 87,000 cards were tabulated on 27 counters, forty
to fifty minutes of which time was occupied in taking
the readings from the counters. In the automatic ma-
chine there is one man to feed the cards in bulk and
one man to take the readings from the counters, but
each of these men may perform this service for a num-
ber of machines. It is estimated that the automatic
machine is capable of doing at least six times the work
of the hand machine.
For courtesies received in gathering the foregoing
data thanks are due to Dr. LeGrand Powers, Chief of
the Agricultural Division of the Census Office.
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