(j3.2006) Do you want a copy of this?

[rweaver at ix.netcom.com]

That letter was one of the sources for Austrian's book "Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information Processing".  See the notes section beginning at page 8 for many references to it.

Thus "Wilson" is J.T. Wilson.  

The book's index has an entry "Wilson, Joseph, 339", but there is no obvious entry on that page for Wilson.  That page does, however, mention a newspaper clipping and the Hollerith letter ends with "... if I have not given you what you want indicate just what you want and I will try again."

So the letter was to J.T. Wilson, likely a newspaper reporter.

The best description, about 30 pages, of Hollerith's early machines is in "The Development of Punch Card Tabulation in the Bureau of the Census 1890-1940", Leon E. Truesdell, US GPO, 1965.

=====================================

Van:

You can forward the text above if you want, but not with my name attached.
dick w




-----Original Message-----
>From: Van Snyder <Van.Snyder at jpl.nasa.gov>
>Sent: Apr 12, 2011 1:53 PM
>To: j3 <j3 at j3-fortran.org>
>Subject: (j3.2006) Do you want a copy of this?
>
>I've received a scan of a letter from Herman Hollerith to somebody named
>Wilson (no first name given), dated 7 August 1919.  My friends at Haus
>zur Geschichte der IBM Datenverarbeitung in Sindelfingen believe Wilson
>was director of data processing at the US Census Bureau during WW II.
>
>It gives some insight into how Hollerith came up with the idea for
>punched cards, and some of the work he did between 1880 and 1919.
>
>Interestingly, he mentions paper tape, and explains why he rejected it.
>"My idea at the time was to use a strip of paper and punch the record
>for each individual in a line across the strip.  then I ran this strip
>over a drum and made contacts through the hole to operate counters.
>This you see gave me an ideal automatic feed.  The trouble was however
>that if for example you wanted any statics [sic] regarding chinamen you
>would have to run miles of paper to count a few chinamen....  I then
>abandoned the continuous strip and took up individual cards."
>
>Let me know if you want a PDF.
>
>-- 
>Van Snyder                    |  What fraction of Americans believe 
>Van.Snyder at jpl.nasa.gov       |  Wrestling is real and NASA is fake?
>Any alleged opinions are my own and have not been approved or
>disapproved by JPL, CalTech, NASA, the President, or anybody else.
>
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