Columbia University Computing History   

The First Key Punch

Patented by Herman Hollerith in 1901 for use with his newer tabulators, which required punching or skipping over any card column from left to right. It was used in the 1900 US Census [44]. Punches like this one (including the 1923 electric model) were manufactured for nearly half a century.

Source: Geoffrey Austrian, Herman Hollerith [44]; CLICK to magnify.
Columbia University Computing History Frank da Cruz / fdc@columbia.edu This page created: 3 January 2004 Last update: 4 April 2021