Herman Hollerith ( February 29 , 1860 -- November 17 , 1929 ) was an American statistician and inventor who developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards to rapidly tabulate statistics from millions of pieces of data .
Herman Hollerith ( February 29 , 1860 -- November 17 , 1929 ) was an American statistician and inventor . He developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards .