Punch Card Used at the Southern Railway Company
date: label: date made
content: ca 1910
label: date made
content: 1910, roughly
label: date made
content: 1910 roughly
name: label: maker
content: Tabulating Machine Company
notes: label: Description
content: Herman Hollerith began manufacturing tabulating machines to compile statistics to the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The nation only compiles a census every ten years, so Hollerith sought business from foreign governments and from commercial customers.
label: Description
content: As early as 1895, the New York Central began using tabulating equipment to track goods moved by the railroad. Hollerith radically redesigned the punch card, putting information in columns with the numbers from 0 to 9. Several columns of numbers comprised a field, which contained information on a single matter. By 1907, the Central was an established customer and other railroads adopted machine accounting. The Southern Railway Company used this 45-column card. It has fields for the date, the receiving station, the waybill number, the code, the forwarding station, the junction point, "Com.", "C.L.", freight, charges, and prepaid amounts.
label: Description
content: Reference:
label: Description
content: G. D. Austrian, <I>Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Pioneer of Information Processing</I>, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982, pp. 111–141, 250–251.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: web subject
content: Mathematics
label: Subject
content: Railroads
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Mathematics
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content: Computers & Business Machines
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content: Tabulating Equipment
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content: Punch Cards
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Virginia Hollerith and Lucia Hollerith
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MA.317982.01
label: accession number
content: 317982
label: catalog number
content: 317982.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: punch card
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: .1 cm x 19 cm x 8.3 cm; 1/32 in x 7 15/32 in x 3 9/32 in