IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black Read Free Book Online

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    Hollerith's idea was a card with standardized holes, each representing a different trait: gender, nationality, occupation, and so forth. The card would then be fed into a "reader." By virtue of easily adjustable spring mechanisms and brief electrical brush contacts sensing for the holes, the cards could be "read" as they raced through a mechanical feeder. The processed cards could then be sorted into stacks based on a specified series of punched holes. 6
    Millions of cards could be sorted and resorted. Any desired trait could be isolated—general or specific—by simply sorting and resorting for data-specific holes. The machines could render the portrait of an entire population—or could pick out any group within that population. Indeed, one man could be identified from among millions if enough holes could be punched into a card and sorted enough times. Every punch card would become an informational storehouse limited only by the number of holes. It was nothing less than a nineteenth-century bar code for human beings. 7
    By 1884, a prototype was constructed. After borrowing a few thousand dollars from a German friend, Hollerith patented and built a production machine. Ironically, the initial test was not a count of the living, but of the dead for local health departments in Maryland, New York, and New Jersey. 8
    Soon, Hollerith found his system could do more than count people. It could rapidly perform the most tedious accounting functions for any enterprise: from freight bills for the New York Central Railroad to actuarial and financial records for Prudential Insurance. Most importantly, the Hollerith system not only counted, it produced analysis. The clanging contraption could calculate in a few weeks the results that a man previously spent years correlating. Buoyed by success, Hollerith organized a trip overseas to show his electromechanical tabulator to European governments, including Germany and Italy. Everywhere Hollerith was met with acclaim from bureaucrats, engineers, and statisticians. 9 His card sorter was more than just a clever gadget. It was a steel, spindle, and rubber-wheeled key to the Pandora's Box of unlimited information.
    When the U.S. Census Bureau sponsored a contest seeking the best automated counting device for its 1890 census, it was no surprise when Hollerith's design won. The judges had been studying it for years. Hollerith quickly manufactured his first machines. 10
    After the 1890 census, Hollerith became an overnight tabulating hero. His statistical feat caught the attention of the general scientific world and even the popular newspapers. His systems saved the Census Bureau some $5 million, or about a third of its budget. Computations were completed with unprecedented speed and added a dramatic new dimension to the entire nature of census taking. Now an army of census takers could posit 235 questions, including queries about the languages spoken in the household, the number of children living at home and elsewhere, the level of each family member's schooling, country of origin, and scores of other traits. Suddenly, the government could profile its own population. 11
    Since the Census Bureau only needed most of the tabulators once every decade, and because the defensive inventor always suspected some electrician or mechanic would steal his design, Hollerith decided that the systems would be leased by the government, not purchased. This important decision to lease machines, not sell them, would dominate all major IBM business transactions for the next century. Washington paid Hollerith about $750,000 to rent his machines for the project. Now the inventor's challenge was to find customers for the machines in between the decennial federal censuses. Quickly, that became no challenge at all. Governments and industry were queuing up for the devices. Census and statistical departments in Russia, Italy, England, France, Austria, and Germany all submitted orders. Hollerith's new technology was