Herman Hollerith's Tabulating Machine: The 1890 Census Machine That Saved $5 Million and Launched IBM

The punched card tabulator

In the 1880s, Herman Hollerith invented an electric tabulating machine that used punched cards to process the 1890 US Census, cutting the count from eight years to six months and saving $5 million. His invention introduced mechanized data processing and the binary principle of ones and zeros, and it led to the founding of IBM. The machine's success spread worldwide, and its methods were used for over 60 years.