One of Watson's moves was to rename the company International Business Machines, and within a few decades, his company had expanded to the point that the Federal government sued it for anti-trust violations.
Thomas Watson, previously working for NCR, took over. Like many modern entrepreneurs, after Hollerith had perfected his first series of electromechanical punched-card machines, including a punch, a tabulating machine to accumulate statistics from the information punched on cards, and a sorting machine, he founded a company, originally called the Tabulating Machine Corporation.Īs with many high-tech startups of today, it had a somewhat rocky start until an experienced manager entered the scene. Unlike Hollerith's cards of 50 years later, which were handled in decks like playing cards, Babbage's punched cards were to be strung together like Jaquard's.ĭespite this and the fact that he never actually built an analytical engine, Babbage's proposed use of cards played a crucial role in later years by providing a precedent that prevented Hollerith's company from claiming patent rights on the idea of storing data on punched cards. The use of punched cards in the Jacquard loom also influenced Charles Babbage, who decided to use punched cards to control the sequence of computations in his proposed analytical engine. Many Jacquard looms remain in use to this day, and you can occasionally find strings of Jaquard cards for sale. Jacquard, a weaver who worked in France around 1810, originated the idea of using holes punched in cardstock to control the pattern a loom weaves.
Hollerith's idea for using punched cards for data processing came after he'd seen how punched cards were used to control Jacquard looms. After this trial use, punched cards were adopted for use in the 1890 census.
The standard punched card, originally invented by Herman Hollerith, was first used for vital statistics tabulation by the New York City Board of Health and several states.
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