THE MECHANICAL WORK OF THE TWELFTH CENSUS (Apr, 1902)
These machines appear in just about every computer history time line I’ve ever seen. In 1911 the Hollerith Tabulating Machine company merged with the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and the patents for these tabulators became the basis for their primary product line of punched card systems. You might know C-T-R better by it’s current name.
As an aside, one thing I’ve noticed as I’ve started scanning earlier and earlier magazines is that sometime in the late 1920’s somebody decided that paragraphs that ran the length of an entire page were not entirely helpful and writers started making them much shorter. Whoever is responsible for this change has my profound thanks.
If you’d like to see how the technology advanced, here are articles about the 1940 , 1950 and 1960 censuses.
THE MECHANICAL WORK OF THE TWELFTH CENSUS.
BY EDWARD W. BYRN.
Now that the Census Bureau has been made a permanent branch of the government, it attains the dignity and importance which its merits deserve. A popular impression prevailing among a large number of people 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 evidenced 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 classified into categories which form a basis for comparisons and conclusions.


































