Herman Hollerith & the Census Machine (1890)

After receiving his Engineer of Mines (EM) degree at age 19, Hollerith worked on the 1880 US census, a laborious and error-prone operation that cried out for mechanization. After some initial trials with paper tape, he settled on punched cards (pioneered in the Jacquard loom) to record information, and designed special equipment -- a tabulator and sorter -- to tally the results. His designs won the competition for the 1890 US census, chosen for their ability to count combined facts. These machines reduced a ten-year job to three months (different sources give different numbers, ranging from six weeks to three years), saved the 1890 taxpayers five million dollars, and earned him an 1890 Columbia PhD¹. This was the first wholly successful information processing system to replace pen and paper. Hollerith's machines were also used for censuses in Russia, Austria, Canada, France, Norway, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, and again in the US census of 1900. In 1911 Hollerith's company merged with two others to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), which changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) in 1924.

Between the 1880 and 1890 censuses, Hollerith spent a year (1882) on the Mechanical Engineering faculty at MIT, and then in the mid-1880s worked on railroad braking systems, obtaining several patents for both electromagnetic pneumatic brakes and vacuum operated brakes, as well as for corrugated metal tubing.

Tabulating Machine Company

He built machines under contract for the US Census Bureau, which used them to tabulate the 1890 census in 2.5 years. The 1880 census had taken seven years. He started his own business in 1896 when he founded the Tabulating Machine Company. Most of the major census bureaus around the world leased his equipment and purchased his cards, as did major insurance companies. To make his system work he invented the first automatic card-feed mechanism, the first Key punch (i.e. a punch that was operated from a keyboard) allowing a skilled operator to punch 200–300 cards per hour and a tabulator. The 1890 Tabulator was hardwired to operate only on 1890 Census cards. A wiring panel in his 1906 Type I Tabulator allowed it to do different jobs without having to be rebuilt (the first step towards programming).These inventions were the foundation of the modern information processing industry.

International Business Machines

In 1911, four corporations, including his firm, merged to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR).^[3] Under the presidency of Thomas J. Watson, it was renamed IBM in 1924.

Hollerith Personal Likes and Dislikes

Other than his inventions, Hollerith was said to cherish three things: his German heritage, his privacy and his cat, Bismarck. He also liked good cigars, fine wine, Guernsey cows, and money.He also disliked property taxes, and the hard-driving salesmenship of Thomas J. Watson Sr.

ENIAC (1946)

ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer,^[1] was the first large-scale, electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems,^[2] although earlier computers had been built with some of these properties. ENIAC was designed and built to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory. The first problems run on the ENIAC however, were related to the design of the hydrogen bomb.  ENIAC had 18,000 tubes and performed 5,000 cycles per second.  The panel shown is one of 40.

Programming

The six women who did most of the programming of ENIAC by manipulating its switches and cables were inducted in 1997 into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame ([1]). As they were called by each other in 1946, they were Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman.

It was first but the patent was no good

ENIAC was conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania and they went on to form UNIVAC.  . For a variety of reasons (including Mauchly's June 1941 examination of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, prototyped in 1939 by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry), the patent for the ENIAC, granted in 1964, was voided by the 1973 decision of the landmark federal court case Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, putting the invention of the electronic digital computer in the public domain and providing legal recognition to Atanasoff as the inventor of the electronic digital computer.

Eckert & Mauchly formed EMMC and then..

Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) -> Univac Division of Remington Rand -> Univac division of Sperry Rand -> Sperry Univac, along with "Sperry Remington", "Sperry New Holland" etc ->  Sperry Corporation -> Unisys.

U.S.A.F. SAGE (1959-83)

 SAGE, the Semi Automatic Ground Environment, was an automated control system used by NORAD for collecting, tracking and intercepting enemy bomber aircraft from the late 1950s into the 1980s. In later versions, the system could automatically direct aircraft to an interception by sending commands directly to the aircraft's autopilot. 

It couldn't stop Soviet missles or anything flying under 500 feet but..

By the time it was fully operational the Soviet bomber threat had been replaced by the Soviet missile threat, for which SAGE was entirely inadequate. Nevertheless, SAGE was tremendously important; it led to huge advances in online systems and interactive computing, real-time computing, and data communications using modems. It is generally considered to be one of the most advanced and successful large computer systems ever developed.

There were 27 and each had two SAGE computers with 49,000 vacuum tubes, weighed 250 tons, and consumed 3,000,000 watts of power.

IBM System/360 (1964) or Texas Holdem "All in"

The IBM System/360 (S/360) is a mainframe computer system family announced by IBM on April 7, 1964. It was the first family of computers making a clear distinction between architecture and implementation, allowing IBM to release a suite of compatible designs at different price points. It was extremely successful in the market, allowing customers to purchase a smaller system with the knowledge they would always be able to migrate upward if their needs grew. The design is considered by many to be one of the most successful computers in history, influencing computer design for years to come. (The 360 and its successors are unquestionably the most profitable line of computer systems in history.  The chief architect of the S/360 was Gene Amdahl.  It was a $5,000,000,000 project when 5B was real money!

DEC PDP-8 (1965)

The PDP-8 was the first successful commercial minicomputer, produced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the 1960s. It was introduced on March 22, 1965 [1] and was the first widely sold computer in the DEC PDP series of computers (the PDP-5 was not originally intended to be a general-purpose computer).  Succeeded by the PDP-11, probably the most successful mini-computer line.  Mini-computers and minicomputer companies were mostly wiped out by UNIX and PCs.

CRI Cray-1 (1976)

Apple Computer, Apple 1 (1976)

IBM PC (1981)