PUNCHED CARD MACHINES

          Punched Cards were originally used by Joseph Marie Jacquard. Charles Babbage had used the punched cards and operated them by mechanical devices.


Dr. HERMAN HOLLERITH

          The first card machine which was electrically activated was used by Dr. Herman Hollerith to compute the statistics of the 1890 United States census. Hollerith was an American mechanical engineer and statistician, working for Census Bureau.
He used the punched cards to store data, with the holes  representing data values. After trying for several formats, Hollerith designed cards which were the size of a dollar bill. It had 288 locations for punching holes.
He developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards. In those machines all the data to be processed are keyed in cards. Because of his sincere efforts, the census of 1890 could be processed in one-third the time of 1880 census.
Hollerith's punched cards method became very popular and widely used. So he started his own company, Tabulating Machine Company in 1896, to manufacture both machines and cards. The interesting fact in the history of computers manufactures is that Hollerith's company was merged with other companies to form the International Business Machine (IBM) Corporation. Today, IBM is the leading company to manufacture the computers and develop software in the world.

GEORGE BOOLE

          George Boole, a British mathematician, introduced mathematics of logic known as Boolean Algebra. It laid the foundation of digital computers. Boolean considered two valued binary notation (i.e. 0 and 1) to represent any form of data. In fact, Boolean Algebra is very useful when we analyse or the design binary system.