Unit record equipment, electric accounting machines (EAM),Origin of the term unit record: It was in 1888 that Mr. Davidson conceived the idea... The idea was that the card catalog, then in fairly general use by libraries, could be adapted with advantage to certain 'commercial indexes'. ... Directly connected with these is one of the most important principles of all - the 'unit record' principal in business. Hitherto, the records of a business house had been kept, each for one fixed purpose, and their usefulness had been restricted by the inflexible limitations of a bound book. The unit record principle, made possible by the card system, gave to these records a new accessibility and significance. ...By 1887 ...Doctor Herman Hollerith had worked out the basis for a mechanical system of recording, compiling, and tabulating census facts... Each card was used to record the facts about an individual or a family - a unit situation. These cards were the forerunners of today's punched cards or unit records. Data processing equipment can be divided into two basic types - computers and unit record machines. Unit Record derives form the common use of punchcards to carry information on a one-item-per-card basis, which makes them unit records. Like the index card, the punched card is a unit record containing one kind of data, which can be combined with other kinds of data punched in other cards. or tab equipment were electromechanical machines used for performing data processing. Used well before the advent of electronic computers, unit record machines came to be as ubiquitous in industry and government in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century as computers became in the last third. They allowed large volume, sophisticated data-processing tasks to be accomplished before electronic computers were invented and while they were still in their infancy. This data processing was accomplished by processing punched cards through various unit record machines in a carefully choreographed progression. This progression, or flow, from machine to machine was often planned and documented with detailed flowcharts that used standardized symbols for documents and the various machine functions. All but the earliest machines had high-speed mechanical feeders to process cards at rates from around 100 to 2,000 per minute, sensing punched holes with mechanical, electrical, or, later, optical sensors. The corporate department responsible for operating this equipment was commonly known as the tab room,The tabulators were the heavy lifters; the collaters, interpreters, keypunches, sorters, and verifiers were considered auxiliary. or tab department. Typically keypunches and verifiers were located elsewhere. The operation of many machines was directed by the use of a removable plugboard, control panel, or connection box.Cemach, Harry P., 1951, The Elements of Punched Card Accounting, Pitman, p.27. Within certain limits the information punched in any column of a card can be reproduced in any desired position by the tabulator. This is achieved by means of a Connection Box. ... The connection box can be easily removed from the tabulator and replaced by another. Initially all machines were manual or electromechanical. The first use of an electronic component was in 1937 when a photocell was used in a Social Security bill-feed machine. Electronic components were used on other machines beginning in the late 1940s.
The term unit record equipment also refers to peripheral equipment attached to computers that reads or writes unit records, e.g., card readers, card punches, printers, MICR readers.
IBM was the largest supplier of unit record equipment, and this article largely reflects IBM practice and terminology.
History
Beginnings In the 1880s Herman Hollerith was the first to record data on a medium that could then be read by a machine. Prior uses of machine readable media had been for lists of instructions (not data) to drive programmed machines such as Jacquard looms and mechanized musical instruments. "After some initial trials with paper tape, he settled on punched cards [...]".Columbia University Computing History - Herman Hollerith To process these punched cards, sometimes referred to as "Hollerith cards", he invented the keypunch, sorter, and tabulator unit record machines.U.S. Census Bureau: The Hollerith MachineAn early use of "Hollerith Card" can be found in the 1914 Actuarial Soc of America Trans. v.XV.51,52- Perforated Card System These inventions were the foundation of the data processing industry. The tabulator used electromechanical relays to increment mechanical counters. Hollerith's method was used in the 1890 census. The company he founded in 1896, the Tabulating Machine Company (TMC), was one of four companies that in 1911 were amalgamated in the forming of a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, later renamed IBM.
Following the 1900 census a permanent Census bureau was formed. The bureau's contract disputes with Hollerith led to the formation of the Census Machine Shop where James Powers and others developed new machines for part of the 1910 census processing. Powers left the Census Bureau in 1911, with rights to patents for the machines he developed, and formed the Powers Accounting Machine Company.U.S. Census Bureau: Tabulation and Processing In 1927 Powers' company was acquired by Remington Rand. In 1919 Fredrik Rosing Bull, after examining Hollerith's machines, began developing unit record machines for his employer. Bull's patents were sold in 1931, constituting the basis for Groupe Bull.
These companies, and others, manufactured, and marketed a variety of general-purpose unit record machines for creating, sorting, and tabulating punched cards, even after the development of computers in the 1950s. Punched card technology had quickly developed into a powerful tool for business data-processing.
Timeline
1884: Herman Hollerith files a patent application titled "Art of Compiling Statistics"; granted on January 8, 1889. 1886: First use of tabulating machine in Baltimore's Department of Health. 1887: Hollerith files a patent application for an integrating tabulator (granted in 1890). 1889: First recorded use of integrating tabulator in the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army. 1890-1895: U.S. Census, Superintendents Robert P. Porter 1889-1893 and Carroll D. Wright 1893–1897, tabulations are done using equipment supplied by Hollerith. 1896: The Tabulating Machine Company founded by Hollerith, trade name for products is Hollerith 1901: Hollerith Automatic Horizontal Sorter 1904: Porter, having returned to England, forms The Tabulator Limited (UK) to market Hollerith's machines.Austrian, 1982, p.216 1905: Hollerith reincorporates the Tabulating Machine Company as The Tabulating Machine Company 1906: Hollerith Type 1 Tabulator, the first tabulator with an automatic card feed and control panel.Computing at Columbia: Timeline - Early 1909: The Tabulator Limited renamed as British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM). 1910: Tabulators built by the Census Machine Shop print results. 1910: Willy Heidinger, an acquaintance of Hollerith, licenses Hollerith's The Tabulating Machine Company patents, creating Dehomag in Germany. 1911: Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), a holding company, formed by the amalgamation of The Tabulating Machine Company and three other companies. 1911: James Powers forms Powers Tabulating Machine Company, later renamed Powers Accounting Machine Company. Powers had been employed by the Census Bureau to work on tabulating machine development and was given the right to patent his inventions there. The machines he developed sensed card punches mechanically, as opposed to Hollerith's electric sensing. 1912: The first Powers horizontal sorting machine. 1914: Thomas J. Watson hired by CTR. 1914: The Tabulating Machine Company produces 2 million punched cards per day.IBM Archives: Endicott chronology, 1951-1959
1914: The first Powers printing tabulator.Information Technology Industry TimeLine 1915 Powers Tabulating Machine Company establishes European operations through the Accounting and Tabulating Machine Company of Great Britain Limited.Cortada p.57 1919: Fredrik Rosing Bull, after studying Hollerith's machines, constructs a prototype 'ordering, recording and adding machine' (tabulator) of his own design. About a dozen machines were produced during the following several years for his employer. 1920s: Early in this decade punched cards began use as bank checks.Engelbourg p.173 1920: BTM begins manufacturing its own machines, rather than simply marketing Hollerith equipment. 1920: The Tabulating Machine Company's first printing tabulator, the Hollerith Type 3. 1921: Powers-Samas develops the first commercial alphabetic punched card representation. 1922: Powers develops an alphabetic printer. 1923: Powers develops a tabulator that accumulates and prints both subtotals and grand totals (rolling totals). 1923: CTR acquires 90% ownership of Dehomag, thus acquiring patents developed by them. 1924: Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) renamed International Business Machines (IBM). There would be no IBM-labeled products until 1933. 1925: The Tabulating Machine Company's first horizontal card sorter, the Hollerith Type 80, processes 400 cards/min.IBM Type 80 Electric Punched Card Sorting Machine 1927: Remington Typewriter Company and Rand Kardex combine to form Remington Rand. Within a year, Remington Rand acquires the Powers Accounting Machine Company. 1928: The Tabulating Machine Company's first tabulator that could subtract, the Hollerith Type IV tabulator.IBM 301 Accounting Machine (the Type IV) The Tabulating Machine Company begins its collaboration with Benjamin Wood, Wallace John Eckert, and the Statistical Bureau at Columbia University.Columbia University Professor Ben Wood The Tabulating Machine Company's 80-column card introduced. Comrie uses punched card machines to calculate the motions of the moon. This project, in which 20,000,000 holes are punched into 500,000 cards continues into 1929. It is the first use of punched cards in a purely scientific application. 1929 The Accounting and Tabulating Machine Company of Great Britain Limited renamed Powers-Samas Accounting Machine Limited (Samas, full name Societe Anonyme des Machines a Statistiques, had been the Power's sales agency in France, formed in 1922). The informal reference "Acc and Tab" would persist. 1930: The Remington Rand 90 column card, offering "more storage capacity [and] alphabetic capability" 1931: H.W.Egli - BULL founded to capitalize on the punched card technology patents of Fredrik Rosing Bull.Heide, Lars (2002) National Capital in the Emergence of a Challenger to IBM in France The Tabulator model T30 is introduced.H.W.Egli - BULL Tabulator model T30
1931: The Tabulating Machine Company's first punched card machine that could multiply, the 600 Multiplying Punch. Their first alphabetical accounting machine - although not a complete alphabet, the Alphabetic Tabulator Model B was quickly followed by the full alphabet ATC. 1931: The term "Super Computing Machine" is used by the New York World newspaper to describe the Columbia Difference Tabulator, a one-of-a-kind special purpose tabulator-based machine made for the Columbia Statistical Bureau, a machine so massive it was nicknamed "Packard". The date given, 1920, should be 1931 (see the Columbia Difference Tabulator web site)Columbia Difference Tabulator The Packard attracted users from across the country: "the Carnegie Foundation, Yale, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Ohio State, Harvard, California, and Princeton."Columbia Alumni News, Vol.XXIII, No.11, December 11, 1931, p.1 1933: Compagnie des Machines Bull is the new name of the reorganized H.W. Egli - Bull.