And lets not forget that Hollerith's invention, with the help of IBM, enabled
the anihilation of, in places, greater than 99% of the Jewish population in
German-occupied territories during WW II.
A h-ll of a legacy for the ticket punch.
sjl
Wes Leatherock wrote:
> And Hollerith, an employee of the Census Bureau, immediately
> realized this could be adapted to make tabulating the census much
> easier. The first use involved rods, sort of like knitting needles,
> stuck through the holes to select the cards representing census
> data corresponding to those holes. Others dropped out, and the
> remaining ones could be readily counted.
>
> He eventually left and organized a company which became the
> Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. In 1924 it changed its
> name to International Business Machines Corporation.
>
> Wes Leatherock
> wleath@s...
>
> On Wed, 4 Apr 2001 jworones@y... wrote:
>
> > Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2001 20:51:01 -0000
> > From: jworones@y...
> > Reply-To: BRHSlist@yahoogroups.com
> > To: BRHSlist@yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: [BRHSlist] ticket punches
> >
> > Here's an amazingly useless but neat fact I came across today.
> >
> > In the Spring 2001 issue of American Heritage of Invention &
> > Technology, there's a short article on the development of the punch
> > card. What's interesting is:
> >
> > "...One day in the early 1880s, the inventor Herman Hollerith noticed
> > that his railroad ticket was perforated with a peculiar pattern of
> > holes. Each hole, he learned, had been punched in a specific place to
> > correspond to a specific physical characteristic: height, eye color,
> > size of nose, and so forth. Conductors did this to keep someone from
> > picking a discarded ticket and pretending it was his own."
> >
> > There you have it!
> >
> > Jeff Worones
> > Las Vegas, NV
>
>
>
>
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