IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black Read Free Book Online Page A

virtually unrivaled. His machines made advanced census taking possible everywhere in the world. He and he alone would control the technology because the punchers, sorters, and tabulators were all de signed to be compatible with each other—and with no other machine that might ever be produced. 12
    Moreover, millions of punch cards would be needed to capture the data. Each disposable punch card could essentially be used only one time. Hollerith had the underpinnings of a monopoly and he had not even started the company. Most important, the whole enterprise quickly elevated Hollerith and his system to supranational status. 13 Governments were just customers, customers to be kept in check. In many ways, Hollerith felt that he and his technology were indeed bigger than governments. In many ways, he was right.
    With the world waiting, it was time for the engineer to launch a corporation. Ironically, Hollerith was too busy garnering new business to create an actual company. Moreover, still in his thirties but already set in his ways, the handlebar mustachioed and often surly Hollerith was not well suited for the task. Hollerith could dress in top hat and elegant walking cane when the occasion required. But he lacked patience and finesse, abhorred the commercialization such a company required, and continually suspected his customers of planning to steal his designs. Maintaining a paternal connection to his invention, Hollerith took everything personally. Hence, no client or contact was too important to antagonize. Grudges were savored long. Feuds relished. Not infrequently, his attitude toward customers was take-it-or-leave-it. Out-spoken and abrasive, he was ready to do combat with government officials whom he suspected of undermining his patent, here or abroad. The little annoyances of life riled him just as much, such as the car that suddenly broke down, prompting an angry letter-writing campaign to the manufacturer. 14
    Other than his inventions, Hollerith was said to cherish three things: his German heritage, his privacy, and his cat Bismarck. His link to everything German was obvious to all around him. Hollerith went out of his way to sail to Europe on German vessels. He once justified his friendship with a colleague's wife, explaining, "[She] is a German so I got along very well with her." And when colleagues thought he needed a rest, they suggested he take a long vacation in the one place he could relax, his beloved ancestral homeland. 15
    For privacy, Hollerith built a tall fence around his home to keep out neighbors and their pets. When too many cats scaled the top to jump into the yard, the ever-inventive Hollerith strung electrical wire along the fence, connected it to a battery, and then perched at his window puffing on a cigar. When a neighbor cat would appear threatening Bismarck's privacy, Hollerith would depress a switch, sending an electrical jolt into the animal. 16
    Hollerith's first major overseas census was organized for the brutal regime of Czar Nicholas II to launch the first-ever census of an estimated 120 million Russians. Nicholas was anxious to import Hollerith technology. So the inventor traveled to St. Petersburg to seal the enormous contract. 17
    Shortly after his return from Russia in late 1896, Hollerith finally incorporated. He located the company office in his austere two-story workshop-warehouse in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., just a few minutes drive from both the White House and Census Bureau. He named his new firm with predictable plainness: the Tabulating Machine Company, a name that would be quickly forgotten. 18 But that same entity would eventually become IBM, one of the most recognizable commercial names of all time.

    SHORTLY AFTER the 1900 census, it became apparent to the federal government that it had helped Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company achieve a global monopoly, one based on an invention the Census Bureau had—in a way—"commissioned" from an employee on the