Herman Hollerith

Herman Hollerith was an American inventor who developed an electromechanical punched card tabulator to assist in summarizing information and, later, accounting. He was the founder of The Tabulating Machine Company that was consolidated in 1911 with three other companies to form the ComputingTabulatingRecording Company, later renamed IBM. Hollerith is regarded as one of the seminal figures in the development of data processing. His invention of the punched card tabulating machine marks the beginning of the era of semiautomatic data processing systems, and his concept dominated that landscape for nearly a century.

Herman Hollerith was born the son of German immigrant Prof. Georg Hollerith from Grofischlingen in Buffalo, New York, where he spent his early childhood. He entered the City College of New York in 1875, graduated from the Columbia University School of Mines with an Engineer of Mines degree in 1879 at age 19, and in 1890 asked for a Ph.D based on his development of the tabulating system. In 1882 Hollerith joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he taught mechanical engineering and conducted his first experiments with punched cards. He eventually moved to Washington, D.C., living in Georgetown, with a home on 29th Street and a business building at 31st Street and the CampO Canal, where today there is a commemorative plaque installed by IBM. He died in Washington D.C. of a heart attack.

Source: Wikipedia