27-576: The Hollerith Electronic Computer ( HEC ) was produced by the British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM) and was based on a design by Professor Andrew Booth of Birkbeck College , London. It was Britain's first mass-produced business computer. The prototype first worked at the end of 1951. In 1950 John Womersley , who had previously led the team developing the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) at
54-414: A 5.5 inches (140 mm) diameter, 1 inch (25 mm) wide drum rotating at 3000 rpm containing 32 tracks each storing sixteen 32-bit words giving a total of 2 kilobytes . The drum had a special track from which the electronics were clocked. The machine had an accumulator and a multiplier register which were arranged to allow double length multiplication. As the multiplicand was repeatedly added to
81-721: A fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR). Under the presidency of Thomas J. Watson , CTR was renamed International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) in 1924. By 1933 The Tabulating Machine Company name had disappeared as subsidiary companies were subsumed by IBM. Herman Hollerith died November 17, 1929. Hollerith is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Hollerith cards were named after Herman Hollerith, as were Hollerith strings and Hollerith constants . His great-grandson,
108-540: A home on 29th Street and a business building at 31st Street and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal , where today there is a commemorative plaque installed by IBM . He died of a heart attack in Washington, D.C., at age 69. At the suggestion of John Shaw Billings , Hollerith developed a mechanism using electrical connections to increment a counter, recording information. A key idea was that a datum could be recorded by
135-467: A machine to assist breaking the German Enigma machine ciphers . This machine, known as a bombe , was initially conceived by Alan Turing , but the actual machine was designed by BTM chief engineer Harold 'Doc' Keen , who had led the company's engineering department throughout the 1930s. The project was codenamed "CANTAB". The project was managed by computing pioneer Dora Metcalf until 1942. By
162-603: A number of enhancements specifically designed for a commercial workload. This became known as the HEC 4. When in 1959 International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) was formed by a merger of the BTM and Powers-Samas , the HEC 4 became the ICT 1201 (1200 series). Some 100 of these machines were sold. The original HEC 1 appears to have spent some time in the ICL company museum before being transferred to
189-538: A printer. In 1959 BTM merged with former rival Powers-Samas to become International Computers and Tabulators Limited (ICT). ICT later became part of International Computers Limited (ICL), which was later taken over by Fujitsu . Hollerith Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in accounting. His invention of
216-407: A rotting barn, he was developing the prototype of his machine. Dr Bird and his team built a copy of Booth's machine in the BTM premises at Icknield Way Letchworth , which they called HEC 1. It was 1.5 m high by 3m wide by 0.5m deep and used simple circuits, with approximately 1000 ex-Government thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) mainly 6J6s which were B7G-based double triodes . The memory consisted of
243-567: A specific relation to each other and to a standard, and then counting or tallying such statistical items separately or in combination by means of mechanical counters operated by electro-magnets the circuits through which are controlled by the perforated sheets, substantially as and for the purpose set forth. Hollerith had left teaching and began working for the United States Census Bureau in the year he filed his first patent application. Titled "Art of Compiling Statistics", it
270-575: The All Purpose Electronic Computer (APEXC) . He needed punched card input and output technologies and struck a deal with BTM, whereby they supplied him with these in return for their copying the machine that he was developing, including its magnetic drum memory. In March 1951, BTM's Dr Raymond 'Dickie' Bird with Bill Davis and Dickie Cox were dispatched to Fenny Compton in Warwickshire where Booth lived and where, in
297-672: The City College of New York in 1875, graduated from the Columbia School of Mines with an Engineer of Mines degree in 1879 at age 19, and, in 1890, earned a Doctor of Philosophy based on his development of the tabulating system. In 1882, Hollerith joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he taught mechanical engineering and conducted his first experiments with punched cards. He eventually moved to Washington, D.C., living in Georgetown with
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#1732782873874324-627: The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) , joined the Unit record equipment company, BTM. He recognised that there was a need for smaller inexpensive computers and recruited Andrew Booth as a consultant to develop such a machine. Booth had previously worked for the British Rayon Research Association (BRRA) before moving to Birkbeck College in 1945. The BRRA had sponsored him to develop what became
351-594: The 1880 census: the larger population, the data items to be collected, the Census Bureau headcount, the scheduled publications, and the use of Hollerith's electromechanical tabulators, reduced the time required to process the census from eight years for the 1880 census to six years for the 1890 census. In 1896, Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company (in 1905 renamed The Tabulating Machine Company). Many major census bureaus around
378-506: The collection of Birmingham museums in 1972. After sometime on display, it was by 2002 in the Birmingham Museum Collection Centre at which point there was a proposal to lend it to Birkbeck College but this fell through. The National Museum of Computing made an approach to borrow the computer in 2014 and the computer was transferred on 12 October 2015. After being cleaned up it was officially unveiled in
405-670: The end of the European war, over two hundred bombes had been built and installed. BTM built a valve based computer called the Hollerith Electronic Computer (HEC). The first model (HEC 1) was built in 1951, an example is held by the Birmingham Museum. BTM went on to develop the HEC 2, 2M and 4 models, eventually building more than 100. The machines had a 2 kilobyte drum memory and 1000 valves, and could use punched cards for input and output, or drive
432-574: The exclusive right to market Hollerith equipment in Britain and the Empire (excluding Canada), BTM paid 25% of its revenues to the American company by way of royalties. This became an ever-increasing burden as the years progressed; BTM attempted to renegotiate the agreement on several occasions, but it was only finally terminated in 1948. During World War II, BTM was called upon to design and manufacture
459-482: The first production machine called HEC 2M was delivered. Seven or eight HEC 2M systems were delivered to customers who included GE Research Laboratories, Thorn, Esso , MoD Boscombe Down , Royal Aircraft Establishment and RAE, Bedford (they had two for wind tunnel applications) and the Indian Mathematical Institute . The next development was of a machine that was essentially a HEC 2 with
486-460: The largest and most successful companies of the 20th century. Hollerith is regarded as one of the seminal figures in the development of data processing. Herman Hollerith was born in Buffalo, New York , in 1860, where he also spent his early childhood. His parents were German immigrants; his father, Georg Hollerith, was a school teacher from Großfischlingen , Rhineland-Palatinate . He entered
513-515: The presence of Dr Bird in April 2016. British Tabulating Machine Company The British Tabulating Machine Company ( BTM ) was a firm which manufactured and sold Hollerith unit record equipment and other data-processing equipment. During World War II , BTM constructed some 200 " bombes ", machines used at Bletchley Park to break the German Enigma machine ciphers. The company
540-434: The presence or absence of a hole at a specific location on a card. For example, if a specific hole location indicates marital status , then a hole there can indicate married while not having a hole indicates single . Hollerith determined that data in specified locations on a card, arranged in rows and columns, could be counted or sorted electromechanically. A description of this system, An Electric Tabulating System (1889) ,
567-568: The product, it got longer while the multiplier got shorter so that the product could fill the accumulator and then continue into the multiplier register. Multiplication took up to 640ms for a 32-bit multiplier, which needed 32 drum accesses. Subsequently, the design was enhanced with larger capacity drums. A pre-production HEC 2 was exhibited at the Business Efficiency Exhibition at Olympia, London in June 1953 and in 1955,
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#1732782873874594-457: The punched card tabulating machine, patented in 1884, marks the beginning of the era of mechanized binary code and semiautomatic data processing systems, and his concept dominated that landscape for nearly a century. Hollerith founded a company that was amalgamated in 1911 with several other companies to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company . In 1924, the company was renamed "International Business Machines" ( IBM ) and became one of
621-526: The world leased his equipment and purchased his cards, as did major insurance companies. Hollerith's machines were used for censuses in England & Wales , Italy , Germany , Russia , Austria , Canada , France , Norway , Puerto Rico , Cuba , and the Philippines , and again in the 1900 U.S. census . He invented the first automatic card-feed mechanism and the first keypunch . The 1890 Tabulator
648-493: Was hardwired to operate on 1890 Census cards. A control panel in his 1906 Type I Tabulator simplified rewiring for different jobs. The 1920s removable control panel supported prewiring and near instant job changing. These inventions were among the foundations of the data processing industry, and Hollerith's punched cards (later used for computer input/output ) continued in use for almost a century. In 1911, four corporations, including Hollerith's firm, were amalgamated to form
675-470: Was filed on September 23, 1884; U.S. Patent 395,782 was granted on January 8, 1889. Hollerith initially did business under his own name, as The Hollerith Electric Tabulating System , specializing in punched card data processing equipment . He provided tabulators and other machines under contract for the Census Office, which used them for the 1890 census . The net effect of the many changes from
702-744: Was formed in 1902 as The Tabulator Limited , after Robert Porter obtained the rights to sell Herman Hollerith 's patented machines from the US Tabulating Machine Company (later to become IBM ). During 1907, the company was renamed the "British Tabulating Machine Company Limited". In 1920, the company moved from London to Letchworth , Hertfordshire ; it was also at this point that it started manufacturing its own machines, rather than simply reselling Hollerith equipment. Annual revenues were £6K in 1915, £122K in 1925, and £170K in 1937. In 1916 there were 45 staff; this increased to 132 in 1922, 326 in 1929 and 1,225 in 1939. In return for
729-566: Was submitted by Hollerith to Columbia University as his doctoral thesis, and is reprinted in Brian Randell 's 1982 The Origins of Digital Computers, Selected Papers . On January 8, 1889, Hollerith was issued U.S. Patent 395,782, claim 2 of which reads: The herein-described method of compiling statistics, which consists in recording separate statistical items pertaining to the individual by holes or combinations of holes punched in sheets of electrically non-conducting material, and bearing
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