In 1886, the first tabulating machine to use a punched card system of data entry was invented by Dr. Herman Hollerith. It was developed by Hollerith for use in tabulating the 1890 U.S. census, in which a population of 62,979,766 was tabulated. Its punch allowed an operator to aim a pointer in a matrix of holes, whereupon a hole would be punched in a blank card at the back of the machine. After the census, Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machines Company, which, through merging and acquiring other companies, became what is today International Business Machines (IBM).
