The Powers Accounting Machine was an information processing device developed in the early 20th century for the U.S. Census Bureau. It was then produced and marketed by the Powers Accounting Machine Company, an information technology company founded by the machine's developer. The company thrived in the early 20th century as a producer of tabulating machines. It was a predecessor to the Unisys corporation.
In 1890, the government began leasing tabulating machines from Herman Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company, to more efficiently, expansively, and accurately produce the national census. In 1900, Hollerith raised the lease pricing. This led the newly formed U.S. Census Bureau to seek other suppliers under its new director, Simon North, in 1903. North returned most of Hollerith's machines, and the Census Bureau began using Charles F. Pidgin's tabulators. These machines proved too slow, so the Bureau undertook to develop its own machine for the 1910 census. [1] North secured a $40,000 appropriation for the project. [2]
James Legrand Powers [3] was a mechanical engineer. He was born in Odessa, Russia, in 1871, and graduated from the Technical School of Odessa. He emigrated to the United States in 1889. [2]
The Census Bureau hired him as a technician in 1907 to help develop the competing tabulating machine. He had already done early experimental work in office machines, and had several patents to his name. [4]
Although Hollerith had numerous patents for his tabulators, Powers managed to avoid infringement, by using mechanical sensors on the punch readers, instead of electrical sensors. The new machine was faster, cheaper, more accurate, less error-prone, and less wasteful than Hollerith's or Pidgin's, while maintaining compatibility with Hollerith's punched card format. [2] [3] [5] [6] The key advantages of the new machine were feeder mechanisms, and the "whole card punch," an improvement over the character-by-character punch of earlier designs. A second machine was also developed by W. W. Lasker, to automate printing results. [2]
Powers secured a patent for his version of the tabulating machine, which allowed him to later create a business around the technology he had invented. [3]
A prolific inventor, he did not restrict himself to office machinery. See, for example, the Germproof Drinking Cup. [7] The inventor was a member of the Machinery Club and the American Society of Mechanical Engineering through the time of his death on Tuesday, November 8, 1927, at age 57. The New York Times ran a brief paid obituary two days later. [8]
The United States Census Bureau tested the machine in the real world by allowing the Cuban government to conduct its census in 1908-1909 using prototypes of the new tabulating machine. [6]
After successful use in the 1910 census, Mr. Powers formed a corporation to manufacture his machines and sell them commercially. The company was founded in 1911 in Newark, New Jersey. In 1914, he moved to Brooklyn, New York. Originally known as Powers Tabulating Machine Company, the name was changed to Powers Accounting Machine Company to better target a broad scope of market.
In 1927 the Remington Typewriter Company and the Rand Kardex Corporation merged, forming Remington Rand Inc. Within a year Remington Rand acquired the Powers Accounting Machine Company. [9]
In Europe, Powers established European operations in 1915 through the Accounting and Tabulating Machine Company of Great Britain Limited, and in 1929 renamed to Powers-Samas Accounting Machine Limited (Samas, full name Societe Anonyme des Machines a Statistiques, had been the Power's sales agency in France). [10] [11] [12] [13]
Herman Hollerith 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 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.
A punched card is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to directly control automated machinery.
UNIVAC was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company and successor organizations.
Remington Rand, Inc., was an early American business machine manufacturer, originally a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers. Formed in 1927 following a merger, Remington Rand was a diversified conglomerate making other office equipment, electric shavers, etc. The Remington Rand Building at 315 Park Avenue South in New York City is a 20-floor skyscraper completed in 1911. After 1955, Remington Rand had a long series of mergers and acquisitions that eventually resulted in the formation of Unisys.
Electronic data processing (EDP) can refer to the use of automated methods to process commercial data. Typically, this uses relatively simple, repetitive activities to process large volumes of similar information. For example: stock updates applied to an inventory, banking transactions applied to account and customer master files, booking and ticketing transactions to an airline's reservation system, billing for utility services. The modifier "electronic" or "automatic" was used with "data processing" (DP), especially c. 1960, to distinguish human clerical data processing from that done by computer.
Starting at the end of the nineteenth century, well before the advent of electronic computers, data processing was performed using electromechanical machines collectively referred to as unit record equipment, electric accounting machines (EAM) or tabulating machines. Unit record machines came to be as ubiquitous in industry and government in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century as computers became in the last third. They allowed large volume, sophisticated data-processing tasks to be accomplished before electronic computers were invented and while they were still in their infancy. This data processing was accomplished by processing punched cards through various unit record machines in a carefully choreographed progression. This progression, or flow, from machine to machine was often planned and documented with detailed flowcharts that used standardized symbols for documents and the various machine functions. All but the earliest machines had high-speed mechanical feeders to process cards at rates from around 100 to 2,000 per minute, sensing punched holes with mechanical, electrical, or, later, optical sensors. The operation of many machines was directed by the use of a removable plugboard, control panel, or connection box. Initially all machines were manual or electromechanical. The first use of an electronic component was in 1937 when a photocell was used in a Social Security bill-feed machine. Electronic components were used on other machines beginning in the late 1940s.
A keypunch is a device for precisely punching holes into stiff paper cards at specific locations as determined by keys struck by a human operator. Other devices included here for that same function include the gang punch, the pantograph punch, and the stamp. The term was also used for similar machines used by humans to transcribe data onto punched tape media.
Dehomag was a German subsidiary of IBM with a monopoly in the German market before and during World War II. The word was a portmanteau for Deutsche Hollerith-Maschinen GmbH. Hollerith refers to the German-American inventor of the technology of punched cards, Herman Hollerith. In April 1949 the company name was changed to IBM Deutschland.
The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information stored on punched cards. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. Later models were widely used for business applications such as accounting and inventory control. It spawned a class of machines, known as unit record equipment, and the data processing industry.
International Computers and Tabulators or ICT was a British computer manufacturer, formed in 1959 by a merger of the British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM) and Powers-Samas. In 1963 it acquired the business computer divisions of Ferranti. It exported computers to many countries and in 1968 became part of International Computers Limited (ICL).
The Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) was founded by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. It was incorporated on December 22, 1947. After building the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, Eckert and Mauchly formed EMCC to build new computer designs for commercial and military applications. The company was initially called the Electronic Control Company, changing its name to Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation when it was incorporated. In 1950, the company was sold to Remington Rand, which later merged with Sperry Corporation to become Sperry Rand, and survives today as Unisys.
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.
Powers-Samas was a British company which sold unit record equipment.
A plugboard or control panel is an array of jacks or sockets into which patch cords can be inserted to complete an electrical circuit. Control panels are sometimes used to direct the operation of unit record equipment, cipher machines, and early computers.
The United States census of 1890 was taken beginning June 2, 1890, but most of the 1890 census materials were destroyed in 1921 when a building caught fire and in the subsequent disposal of the remaining damaged records. It determined the resident population of the United States to be 62,979,766—an increase of 25.5 percent over the 50,189,209 persons enumerated during the 1880 census. The data reported that the distribution of the population had resulted in the disappearance of the American frontier.
The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) was a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and measuring systems subsequently known as IBM.
International Business Machines (IBM) is a multinational computer technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM originated from the unification of several companies that worked to automate routine business transactions, including the first companies to build punched card based data tabulating machines and to build time clocks. In 1911, these companies were amalgamated into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR).
Remington Products, commonly known as simply Remington, is an American personal care brand which manufactures hair clippers, electric shavers, epilators, and haircare products. It is a subsidiary of Spectrum Brands and Oak Hill Capital.
The Library Bureau was a business founded by Melville Dewey in 1876 to provide supplies and equipment to libraries. The Library Bureau quickly became a one-stop vendor for supplies and equipment a library might need. By 1900, its lengthy, well illustrated catalog was widely distributed.
James Legrand Powers was a US inventor and entrepreneur, the founder of Powers Accounting Machine Company.