American Mathematician and Inventor 1860–1929

The presidential race between Texas Governor George W. Bush and U.S. Vice-President Al Gore in November 2000 illustrated the importance of accurately counting every vote. The hand recounts also revealed how collecting and interpreting vast amounts of data by hand can pose many difficulties,

Herman Hollerith invented the tabulating machine, and his company, through mergers, eventually became IBM.

including, but not limited to, error and bias. Herman Hollerith's invention of a tabulating machine was the first attempt to solve these problems.

During the 1880 U.S. census, the logistical problems of gathering and tabulating great amounts of data quickly enough for the data to remain useful was first recognized. In fact, the data from the 1880 census took nearly seven years to tabulate, far too long for the results to accurately reflect statistics that were needed for determining seats in the U.S. House...