Issuance of Patent for Punched Card

Date: January 8, 1889 • Location: Rome, Italy

Herman Hollerith is issued US patent #395,791 for the 'Art of Applying Statistics' — his punched card calculator.

Herman Hollerith was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in accounting. His invention of the punched card tabulating machine, patented in 1884, marks the beginning of the era of mechanized binary code and semiautomatic data processing systems, and his concept dominated that landscape for nearly a century.