Quotes About Tabulate

The 1880 census had taken eight years to tabulate. But in 1890, the Census Bureau's Herman Hollerith, an engineer from Buffalo, New York, who'd taught mechanical engineering at MIT, introduced a reform that allowed for the census to be tallied in just a year.

The machines were reliable and safe, he repeated to others as questions mounted. "They're not connected on the internet and they tabulate the votes by taking a thumb drive, encoded to a specific machine in a specific precinct, and taking that to a central location to transfer the votes and count them.