The first automatic data processing system. Developed by Herman Hollerith, a Census Bureau statistician, the machine was first used to count the U.S. census of 1890. It was so successful that ...

Mindful of the cost of renting Hollerith tabulating equipment, the Bureau of the Census hired Russian émigré James Powers to design alternate machines for counting and sorting data from punched cards.

A resolution to this problem was presented by Herman Hollerith. He developed a machine that could read data from paper cards. Census personnel entered the data by punching out the holes on the cards.

Mindful of the cost of renting Hollerith tabulating equipment, the Bureau of the Census hired Russian émigré James Powers to design alternate machines for counting and sorting data from punched cards.