Computers & Business Machines
Imagine the loss, 100 years from now, if museums hadn't begun preserving the artifacts of the computer age. The last few decades offer proof positive of why museums must collect continuously—to document technological and social transformations already underway.
The museum's collections contain mainframes, minicomputers, microcomputers, and handheld devices. Computers range from the pioneering ENIAC to microcomputers like the Altair and the Apple I. A Cray2 supercomputer is part of the collections, along with one of the towers of IBM's Deep Blue, the computer that defeated reigning champion Garry Kasparov in a chess match in 1997. Computer components and peripherals, games, software, manuals, and other documents are part of the collections. Some of the instruments of business include adding machines, calculators, typewriters, dictating machines, fax machines, cash registers, and photocopiers
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Group of Sheets, Legal Documents and Correspondence of James Powers
- Description
- These sheets include a deed for a purchase of property in Virginia by tabulating machine inventor James Powers in 1898, as well as correspondence of Powers from the period 1913-1927 – most from the 1920s.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1898,
- 1898, 1913-1927
- ID Number
- 1991.3180.04
- nonaccession number
- 1991.3180
- catalog number
- 1991.3180.04
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Counter from a Hollerith Tabulating Machine
- Description
- This is a single counter from a Hollerith tabulating machine. It has square brass pieces on top and bottom, with a brass mechanism in between. A paper-covered metal dial on top is divided around the edge into 100 equal parts. Two hands are on the face of the dial. Advancing the small hand by 100 (one revolution) advances the large hand by one. Hence the counter can read up to 9,999.
- A mark around the center of the dial reads: THE HOLLERITH (/) ELECTRIC TABULATING SYSTEM (/) PATENTED, 1889.
- Compare to the dials on MA.312895.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1890
- ID Number
- MA.335638
- catalog number
- 335638
- accession number
- 1977.0114
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Electrotype Printing Block Showing a Hollerith Pantograph Card Punch
- Description
- This electrotype printing block is engraved in metal and attached to a wooden block. It shows a pantograph card punch on the design of Herman Hollerith.
- The engraving reads (in reverse print): THE HOLLERITH ELECTRIC TABULATING SYSTEM. It also reads (in reverse): BARTLETT & CO NY. An illustration that may have used a similar block appeared in an 1890 article on the Hollerith tabulating system published in Manufacturer and Builder.
- For related objects, see MA.312896 and 2011.3121.01
- References:
- "Further Details of the Hollerith Electric Tabulating System," Manufacturer and Builder, May 22, 1890, pp. 118–119.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1890
- ID Number
- 1977.0503.01
- catalog number
- 336120
- accession number
- 1977.0503
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Electrical Component Associated with Herman Hollerith
- Description
- This metal component includes a wooden framework painted black. An interrupter is at one end, and an electromagnet within the box. Herman Hollerith was the first inventor to build successful computing devices based on electromagnets. This may have been a part of a tabulating machine.
- This piece does not seem to match any drawing in Hollerith’s patents.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1890
- ID Number
- 1995.3037.01
- nonaccession number
- 1995.3037
- catalog number
- 1995.3037.01
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Punch Board for a Hollerith Pantograph Card Punch
- Description
- This is the celluloid plate from the front of a pantograph card punch. The instrument was patented by Herman Hollerith and used in the U. S. Census of population in 1890. A mark on it reads: THE HOLLERITH ELECTRIC TABULATING SYSTEM (/) System Patented January 8th 1889.
- Compare MA.312896.
- Reference:
- Leon E. Truesdell, The Development of Punch Card Tabulation in the Bureau of the Census 1890–1940, Washington: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1965, pp. 43–44.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1890
- maker
- Hollerith, Herman
- ID Number
- MA.317982.03
- accession number
- 317982
- catalog number
- 317982.03
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Framed Photograph of a Hollerith Pantograph Card Punch
- Description
- This gelatin-silvered photograph shows an early version of the pantograph card punch that Herman Hollerith patented in 1890. The photograph is matted, and has a glass cover and wooden frame.
- Four places on the photograph are marked in red ink: 2.
- For related object, see MA.312896.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- ca 1890
- ID Number
- MA.317982.04
- accession number
- 317982
- catalog number
- 317982.04
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
-
Hollerith Card Sorter
- Description
- During the 1880s the engineer Herman Hollerith devised a set of machines for compiling data from the U.S. Census. Hollerith's tabulating system included a punch for entering data about each person onto a blank card, a tabulator for reading the cards and summing up information, and a sorting box for sorting the cards for further analysis.
- This third part of the system, the sorter, is shown on the right in the photograph. It is an oak box with 26 vertical compartments arranged in two rows. Each compartment has a brass cover that is held in place by an electric catch connected to the tabulator. The sorter is connected by a cable to the tabulator. Once a card is read by the tabulator, a compartment opens in the sorter, indicating where the card should be placed for further counting. The front and back sides of the sorter open so that one may remove stacks of cards from the compartments.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1890
- maker
- Tabulating Machine Company
- ID Number
- MA.312897
- accession number
- 171118
- catalog number
- 312897
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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Framed Diploma of Herman Hollerith, Doctor of Philosophy, Columbia University
- Description
- The inventor and businessman Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) grew up in New York, the son of German immigrants. He attended the College of the City of New York and then Columbia University, receiving an “engineer of mines” degree from the latter institution in 1879, at age nineteen. Hollerith worked as a special agent for the U.S. Census of 1880, taught briefly in the mechanical engineering program at MIT, and returned to Washington, DC as an assistant patent examiner. From 1884, he devoted himself to invention, particularly the invention of machines for tabulating data. This led to compilation of mortality statistics from the city of Baltimore and then reduction of data from the U.S. Census of 1890. In the spring of 1890, Hollerith requested that Columbia University grant him a PhD. The trustees agreed and, with payment of a $5 matriculation fee and a $35 tuition fee for courses not actually taken, Hollerith received this diploma that June. His tabulating machine proved most successful, leading to the establishment of the Computing Tabulating Machine Company of Washington, D.C., a forerunner of IBM.
- Reference:
- Geoffrey D. Austrian, Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information Processing, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- date made
- 1890
- maker
- Columbia University
- ID Number
- MA.317982.08
- accession number
- 317982
- catalog number
- 317982.08
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
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