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18871776 Club

Hollerith files "Art of Compiling Statistics"; holes punched in cards will read back by machine

The Columbia-trained statistician files his first patent application, describing a system that stores census data as punched holes and retrieves it electromechanically.

By 1884, the United States Census Bureau faced a problem it could not solve with pencils and ledger sheets: the 1880 census had taken eight years to tabulate, and the next one was already approaching. Herman Hollerith, a German-American statistician from Buffalo who had studied at the Columbia School of Mines, filed his first patent application — titled "Art of Compiling Statistics" — on September 23, 1884, describing a system that stored data as holes punched in cards and read it back electromechanically. U.S. Patent 395,782 was granted on January 8, 1889. The company Hollerith built on that patent eventually became IBM…

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More from June 8
1789

Madison rises in the House with a list of amendments; rivals are still calling for a second convention

Drawing on more than two hundred proposals from state ratifying conventions, he moves to revise the Constitution before its opponents can dismantle it.
1906

Roosevelt signs the Antiquities Act; no proclamation needed from Congress to seal off federal land

For decades, pot hunters have stripped pottery and bones from Chaco Canyon and across the Southwest. The president can now designate national monuments alone, by proclamation.
1861

Tennessee votes to leave the Union; the eleventh state is also the last

Middle Tennessee swings from 51 percent against secession in February to 88 percent in favor today, providing the decisive margin, though East Tennessee refuses to accept the result.
17761776 Club
A local farmer leads the 2,000-man column off the road as British reinforcements land behind them, cutting off any retreat north.
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More from Gilded Age & Progressive Era
1882

Guiteau hangs at the Washington jail; Garfield's killer takes nine months to follow him

The self-declared savior of the Republican Party had bought his ivory-gripped revolver with a museum in mind. The jury was not sympathetic.
1898

Roosevelt and the Buffalo Soldiers take Kettle Hill; San Juan Heights fall to the Fifth Corps

Outnumbered 16-to-1, Spanish defenders under Linares y Pombo inflict punishing losses before the heights are carried and the road to Santiago opens.
1890

Harrison signs Idaho into the union; the 43rd state misses the Fourth by one day

Delegate Dubois had asked the President to wait and sign on July 4th; Harrison declined, ending twenty-seven years of territorial status a day early.
1898

McKinley signs the Newlands Resolution; Hawaii is annexed, and its $4 million debt with it

The House voted 209 to 91 and the Senate 42 to 21, with a Pacific war making the islands' coaling station and anchorage look essential to Washington.
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