Unit record equipment


Unit record equipment, electric accounting machines, 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, 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. 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 to drive programmed machines such as Jacquard looms and mechanized musical instruments. "After some initial trials with paper tape, he settled on punched cards ". To process these punched cards, sometimes referred to as "Hollerith cards", he invented the keypunch, sorter, and tabulator unit record machines. 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, 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. 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.
  • 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 to market Hollerith's machines.
  • 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.
  • 1909: The Tabulator Limited renamed as British Tabulating Machine Company.
  • 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, 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.
  • 1914: The first Powers printing tabulator.
  • 1915 Powers Tabulating Machine Company establishes European operations through the Accounting and Tabulating Machine Company of Great Britain Limited.
  • 1919: Fredrik Rosing Bull, after studying Hollerith's machines, constructs a prototype 'ordering, recording and adding machine' 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.
  • 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.
  • 1923: CTR acquires 90% ownership of Dehomag, thus acquiring patents developed by them.
  • 1924: Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company renamed International Business Machines. 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.
  • 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. The Tabulating Machine Company begins its collaboration with Benjamin Wood, Wallace John Eckert, and the Statistical Bureau at Columbia University. 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. The informal reference "Acc and Tab" would persist.
  • 1930: The Remington Rand 90 column card, offering "more storage capacity alphabetic capability"
  • 1931: H.W.Egli - BULL founded to capitalize on the punched card technology patents of Fredrik Rosing Bull. The Tabulator model T30 is introduced.
  • 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 Packard attracted users from across the country: "the Carnegie Foundation, Yale, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Ohio State, Harvard, California, and Princeton."
  • 1933: Compagnie des Machines Bull is the new name of the reorganized H.W. Egli - Bull.
  • 1933: The Tabulating Machine Company name disappears as subsidiary companies are merged into IBM. The Hollerith trade name is replaced by IBM. IBM introduces removable control panels.
  • 1933: Dehomag's BK tabulator announced.
  • 1934: IBM renames its Tabulators as Electric Accounting Machines.
  • 1935: BTM Rolling Total Tabulator introduced.
  • 1937: Leslie Comrie establishes the Scientific Computing Service Limited - the first for-profit calculating agency.
  • 1937: The first collator, the IBM 077 Collator The first use of an electronic component in an IBM product was a photocell in a Social Security bill-feed machine. By 1937 IBM had 32 presses at work in Endicott, N.Y., printing, cutting, and stacking five to 10 million punched cards every day.
  • 1938: Powers-Samas multiplying punch introduced.
  • 1941 Introduction of Bull Type A unit record machines based on 80 column card.
  • 1943: "IBM had about 10,000 tabulators on rental 601 multipliers numbered about 2000 keypunch 24,500".
  • 1946: The first IBM punched card machine that could divide, the IBM 602, was introduced. Unreliable, it "was upgraded to the 602-A by 1948". The IBM 603 Electronic Multiplier was introduced, "the first electronic calculator ever placed into production.".
  • 1948: The IBM 604 Electronic Punch. "No other calculator of comparable size or cost could match its capability".
  • 1949: The IBM 024 Card Punch, 026 Printing Card Punch, 082 Sorter, 403 Accounting machine, 407 Accounting machine, and Card Programmed Calculator introduced.
  • 1952: Bull Gamma 3 introduced. An electronic calculator with delay-line memory, programmed by a connection panel, that was connected to a tabulator or card reader-punch. The Gamma 3 had greater capacity, greater speed, and lower rentals than competitive products.
  • 1952: Remington Rand 409 Calculator introduced.
  • 1952: Underwood Corp acquires the American assets of Powers-Samas.
By the 1950s punched cards and unit record machines had become ubiquitous in academia, industry, and government. The warning often printed on cards that were to be individually handled, "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate", coined by Charles A. Philips, became a motto for the post-World War II era.
With the development of computers punched cards found new uses as their principal input media. Punched cards were used not only for data, but for a new application - computer programs, see: Computer programming in the punched card era. Unit record machines therefore remained in computer installations in a supporting role for keypunching, reproducing card decks, and printing.
  • 1955: IBM produces 72.5 million punched cards per day.
  • 1957: The IBM 608, a transistor version of the 1948 IBM 604. First commercial all-transistor calculator.
  • 1958: The "Series 50", basic accounting machines, was announced. These were modified machines, with reduced speed and/or function, offered for rental at reduced rates. The name "Series 50" relates to a similar marketing effort, the "Model 50", seen in the IBM 1940 product booklet. An alternate report identifies the modified machines as "Type 5050" introduced in 1959 and notes that Remington-Rand introduced similar products.
  • 1959: BTM merges with rival Powers-Samas to form International Computers and Tabulators.
  • 1959: The IBM 1401, internally known in IBM for a time as "SPACE" and developed in part as a response to the Bull Gamma 3, outperforms three IBM 407s and a 604, while having a much lower rental. That functionality, combined with the availability of tape drives, accelerated the decline in unit record equipment usage.
  • 1960: The IBM 609 Calculator, an improved 608 with core memory. This will be IBMs last punched card calculator.
Many organizations were loath to alter systems that were working, so production unit record installations remained in operation long after computers offered faster and more cost-effective solutions. Cost or availability of equipment was another factor; for example in 1965 an IBM 1620 computer did not have a printer as standard equipment, so it was normal in such installations to punch output onto cards and then print these cards using an IBM 407 accounting machine. Specialized uses of punched cards such as toll collection, microform aperture cards, and punched card voting kept unit record equipment in use into the twenty-first century.