PEOPLE COUNT - Making Sense Out of the Census

                                          Herman Hollerith,

At 20 years of age

    American inventor, born February 29, 1860 in Buffalo, New York, and graduated  from Columbia in 1879. Through a friend he got a position at the Census Bureau as a statistician to help solve problems analyzing the enormous amounts data generated by the 1880 census. He joined MIT in 1881 where he taught Mechaniclal Engineering and devised a system of encoding data on cards through a series of punched holes. He left MIT in 1883 and worked at the U.S. Patent office  as an assistant patent examiner. He resigned a year later and received a patent for his machine in 1884. 
  Following the 1880 census, the Census Bureau was collecting more data than it could tabulate. As a result, the agency held a competition in 1888 to find a more efficient method to process and tabulate data. Contestants were asked to process 1880 census data from four areas in St Louis, MO. Whoever captured and processed the data fastest would win a contract for the 1890 census.
  Three contestants accepted the Census Bureau's challenge. The first two contestants captured the data in 144.5 hours and 100.5 hours. The third contestant, a former Census Bureau employee named Herman Hollerith, completed the data capture process in 72.5 hours.
  Next, the contestants had to prove that their designs could prepare data for tabulation (i.e., by age category, race, gender, etc.). Two contestants required 44.5 hours and 55.5 hours. Hollerith astounded Census Bureau officials by completing the task in just 5.5 hours!
  Herman Hollerith's impressive results earned him the contract to process and tabulate 1890 census data. This system proved useful in statistical work and was important in the development of the digital computer. Hollerith's machine, "read" the cards by passing them through electrical contacts. Closed circuits, which indicated hole positions, could then be selected and counted. 

  Each Hollerith tabulator was equipped with a card reading station. Clerks opened the reader and positioned a punched card between the plates. The 1890 Hollerith tabulators consisted of 40 data-recording dials. Each dial represented a different data item collected during the census. A sorting table was positioned next to each tabulator. After registering the punch card data on the dials, the sorter specified which drawer the operator should place the card. The clerk opened the reader, placed the punch card in the designated sorter drawer, reset the dials, and positioned a new card to repeat the process. An experienced tabulator clerk could process 80 punch cards per minute.

   The Hollerith system was clearly a great leap forward. It took years of hard, patient work to complete the invention. He joined the Census Office in 1879, but didn't file his first patent until 1884. He first put his machines to work in 1887 in Baltimore—just about the time the Census Office was limping through the final stages of manually tabulating the 1880 census. At that rate, the 1890 census would be out of date by the time it was completed. 

   The population was growing about 25 percent a decade, to more than 60 million in 1890. And more information was needed on each of those 60 million people.  It really proved itself in the real census of 1890. Complete results were available two years sooner than the previous census. The data was more thoroughly analyzed, too, and at less cost—an estimated $5 million less than manual tabulation, nearly ten times greater than the predicted saving and a smaller amount of manpower than would have been necessary otherwise. The system was again used for the 1891 census in Canada, Norway and Austria and later for the 1911 UK census.

   In 1896, Hollerith formed the Tabulating Machine Company, opening a shop in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC. This international company leased and sold tabulation machines to census bureaus and insurance companies.  He provided machines for the 1900 census count, but had greatly raised his leasing prices. Hollerith, secure in his monopoly over the technology, knew that the Census Office would have to pay whatever he demanded. It did, but when the office became the permanent Census Bureau in 1902, it began to explore other options.   Barely skirting patent restrictions, Census Bureau employees were able to create their own tabulating machine, more advanced than Hollerith's, in time for the 1910 census. Census Bureau technician James Powers was able to secure the patent for this machine, and he started his own machine tabulation company in 1911.

   Hollerith's company continued to grow as it adapted its machines to do more jobs. For example, in 1906, Hollerith added a plugboard control panel so that new machines would not have to be rebuilt to do new tasks. Business continued to grow, and so did the company. In 1911, Herman Hollerith merged Tabulation Machine Company with three other companies to create Computing Tabulating Recording Company. In 1924, the company was re-named International Business Machines Corporation, better known as IBM today. Modified versions of his technology would continue to be used at the Census Bureau until replaced by computers in the 1950s. 

   Although Hollerith worked with the company he founded as a consulting engineer until his retirement in 1921, he became less and less involved in day-to-day operations. Hollerith retired to his farm in rural Maryland, where he spent the rest of his life raising Guernsey cattle.  He died of a heart attack in November 1929 in Washington D.C. and buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown.
    

   

Horsing Around in Buffalo

N.Y. Times  Dec 30, 1873

THE EAST BUFFALO STOCKYARDS

   BUFFALO, N.Y., DEC. 29

Auction Sale of Horses at East Buffalo

   The receipts of livestock at the East Buffalo Stockyards for 1873 exhibit a flattering increase over those of previous years, footing up 409,758 head of cattle, 733,400 head of sheep, 1,662,500 head of hogs, and 28,326 head of horses. The estimated value of this stock exclusive of the horses is $47,517,750.  The shipments for the year to Eastern markets were: 381,191 head of cattle, 695,000 head of sheep, 1,458,100 head of hogs, and 27,239 head of horses.

THE HORSE MARKET

A Typical Group of Workhorses

Buffalo Illustrated Express     
Sunday April 26 1891   
   

One of Buffalo's institutions which is fast receiving national fame is it's horse market.  It was hardly a year ago that the horse sales at East Buffalo were a very small item in business done there, while now they include the exchange of large sums of money and the disposal of about a thousand horses a week... The strength of the market has indeed been many when the short time in which the market has taken place is considered.  It is estimated that not more than 13 or 14 carloads of horses were sold at the Crandell House Auctions, and at that, the Crandell House Auctions were the only ones conducted at East Buffalo.  A big jump in the sales took place the following year when it is estimated over 500 carloads representing about 10,000 horses were sold.  Nor did the increase stop at the end of the year.  Already over 10,000 horses have been sold during the four months of the year 1891, and it is safe to say at least as many more, or even twice as many more will be sold before January 1892.

  Chicago is still the largest horse market in the united states, but if the Buffalo market increases at anything like the present rate, it will soon leave Chicago far behind..... Local buyers form a very small percentage of the buyers at East Buffalo. The many advantages of Buffalo as a shipping point attract horsemen from all the Eastern States. Hitherto they have been in the habit of going to Chicago to get their horses, but now they find the savings of two days time, traveling expenses and half the freight on horses shipped East, is made by buying in Buffalo.

Horses About To Be Transported

  Prices range about the same in the two cities, and at times Buffalo prices have been even lower than Chicago prices.  Thus it is evident that as long as the demand for horses in eastern cities increases, the Buffalo horse sales will increase proportionately, and will eventually exceed those of Chicago.

  The East and the West meet at the Buffalo Horse Market. Buyers come from the New England States..... and the shippers hail from all parts of the wooly West.....The horses comprise all grades and estates.  The ordinary hack and the draught horse of course, predominate.  Many fine work horses are sold every day.  Stylish carriage horses, cobs, riding horses and driving horses are also to be found in plenty. The Mustang from the West and the Kentucky-bred horse often stand side by side awaiting their turn to be sold. The lowly but useful mule finds as ready a eulogizer in the auctioneer as the high-bred trotter.....

    As most of the horses are bought by out of town men, and are shipped away as soon as possible, they are usually tied together in blocks of five and led to the cars as shown in one of todays pictures.  They make a picturesque sight as line after line of them is lead down the street, each horses tail being bound with a bright red flannel fillet.

EDITORS NOTE:   In the next couple of years Buffalo did indeed become the largest horse market, not just in the U.S. but the world!  Oh yeah, and the largest sheep market in the world? Buffalo too! I'll bet the auctioneers always slept well at night, counting those sheep all day long. :)  Would you believe I have film I took of the Buffalo Horse Market in July of 1897? I've been around longer than you think!  

                    

                              

Why is it called - "MILITARY ROAD"?

    Because it was Built 209 years ago by soldiers.  One of the first roads

 in the country planned for military purposes by the Federal Government

Military Road, The long Arching Line From 
Lewiston to Black Rock

       In planning the national defense after the revolutionary war, the new federal government realized the need of a military highway extending straight through from the top of the Lewiston escarpment to the bluff at Black Rock, on which a large fortification was planned to guard the entrance to the Niagara River. The Military Highway would replace the old Portage Road which followed too closely the winding course of the Niagara River.  

    Thus was Military Road conceived by the federal government, and in 1801, General Moses Porter, commander at Fort Niagara, was ordered to use his troops to build it.  The troops did not like the order, but they went to work with a will, and in 1802, the right of way for the road had been cleared. It was a tremendous undertaking for the soldiers because the road was cut straight through the forests and cleared over treacherous swamp lands.  Bridges were built at Tonawanda, but work ceased on the road surface when the state and federal authorities disagreed.  The argument lasted seven years, and it was not until 1809 that New York State gave $1500 for the project and the road was completed.

    The large fort proposed at Buffalo was never built, although a small one was built in  Black Rock in 1807 and enlarged into Fort Tompkins in August of 1812. It was at the top of the bluff at the bend in Niagara St.  About the only use the "military" road got during the War of 1812, was when the American General McClure fled over it to Buffalo in the winter of 1813, leaving Fort Niagara to take care of itself against the British invasion he had caused by burning Newark (Niagara on The Lake).

      By 1820 Military Road was overgrown with weeds and bushes, and only sections of it were used by local farmers.  It was not until 1832 that the surface of the road was cleared and repaired, and it became a generally used state highway.  Few modern motorists speeding over its smooth surface, know that it was originally hewed out of the forests by soldiers axes, and for specific military purposes.

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On center Median, Sheridan Drive at
Military Road.

1010 Niagara Street