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Technology often advances by the adoption of ideas from unlikely quarters. The analytical engine of Charles Babbage, for instance, used a concept theoretically devised by Frenchman Joseph Jacquard for weaving textiles. Jacquard, noting the repetitious nature of the task required of weavers working on looms, devised a stiff card with a series of holes punched in it. The card blocked certain threads from entering the loom and let other threads go on to complete the weave. Babbage realized that the punched-card system could also be used to control the order of calculations in the analytical engine, and he incorporated the device in his machine. The Babbage/Jacquard idea, kept alive in Lady Ada Byron’s notes, finally found utility in the United States in the 1890 census.技术进步的想法不可能季度通过。查尔斯·巴贝奇的分析机，例如，使用一个概念，从理论上设计了由法国人约瑟夫·提花织造纺织品。提花，注意到重复的织机上织工的工作性质，商业该改革留学论文任务要求，制定了一系列的孔打在坚硬的卡。卡封锁某些线程进入织机，并让其他线程去完成的编织。巴贝奇意识到，冲孔卡系统也可以用于控制在在分析引擎的计算的顺序，他将在他的机器设备。巴贝奇/提花理念，保持活着夫人艾达拜伦的笔记，终于发现美国在1890年的人口普查实用程序。

America in the late 19th century burgeoned with a growing population of new immigrants from Europe, so large a mass yearning to breathe free that as a consequence the census of 1880 required 7 1/2 years to tabulate, since all counting had to be done by hand. Realizing that it faced the danger of not completing a census before having to do the next one (the U.S Congress requires a census of the country’s population every ten years), the Census Bureau held a competition to find a new method of counting.

Many ideas were submitted, but three were chosen as final contenders: William Hunt’s system of colored cards, Charles Pidgin’s system of color-coded tokens, and Herman Hollerith’s electronic tabulation machine. A final test, involving a count of the population of St. Louis, Missouri, however, yielded the following results: Hunt’s system—55 hours; Pidgin’s system—44 hours; Hollerith’s machine—5 1/2 hours. The Census Bureau, accordingly, adopted the Hollerith electric tabulator and, as a result, an official count of the 1890 population (62,622, 250) was announced only six weeks after the census was taken.
Like the Jacquard cards, Hollerith’s punched cards involved stiff paper with holes punched in specific places, representing data to be processed. In the machine, rods passing through the holes completed an electrical circuit, causing a counter to advance one unit. The difference between Babbage’s and Hollerith’s machines, however, was crucial: Babbage’s was mechanical physically incapable of operating with precision; Hollerith’s was electrical.
Hollerith realized that there was a commercial need for the rapid tabulation of figures and statistics, and in 1896 he left the Census Bureau to found the Tabulating Machine Company. The company was successful in selling services to railroads and other clients, including the government of czarist Russia. In 1924, the successor to this company merged with two others to form the international Business Machines Corporation, known today as that giant of the computer industry, IBM.