Punch-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880–1945 (review)

The emergence of the modern information society is generally associated with the invention of the electronic digital computer in the mid-twentieth century. But as the historian Lars Heide reminds us, the key innovation that enabled the rise of the modern information-centric organization—both corporate and governmental—was the punch-card tabulating machine. Not only was the punch-card tabulator the foundational information technology of the modern industrial nation state, but the data-processing industry that developed around the punch card served as the framework around which the electronic computer industry would later take shape. It is no coincidence that the two major players in the early electronic computer industry, IBM and Remington Rand (manufacturer of the UNIVAC), were also prominent providers of punch-card technologies and services.

The focus of the first third of Heide’s book is the story of Herman Hol-lerith, the Columbia engineer who first invented the punch-card tabulator for use in processing the 1890 U.S. census. The story of Hollerith is a familiar one, but Heide tells it in a uniquely compelling fashion, conveying a great deal of essential technical detail without falling into the trap of narrow internalism. Borrowing judiciously from the methodology of the social construction of technology, Heide portrays the history of the tabulating machines as a series of closure events: punch-card technology is repeatedly reinvented by various configurations of actors alternatively as a census-processing technology, a tool for producing government statistics, a corporate bookkeeping device, and a means for managing large national registers. Each act of reinvention required organizational as well as technological innovation, and Heide makes excellent use of the Hughesian concept of the reverse salient to capture the dynamics of change that occurred within the punch-card industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

One particularly illustrative example of Heide’s deft interweaving of the social and technological is his discussion of the United States Census Bureau. The shift toward mechanized information processing within the Census Bureau is often explained almost solely in terms of straightforward economic and demographic reality: a rapidly growing population, combined with an increasing demand for statistical data, created the context in which the mechanical punch-card system was obviously superior. But Heide suggests that this privileging of speed over other criteria, such as cost, was a function not so much of economic imperatives or clear technological superiority as political expediency: since the Census Bureau in this period was not a permanent institution, but was reconstituted every ten years for the decennial census, its administrators privileged short-term but expensive technological fixes over long-term investments in personnel. The primary motivation for mechanization seems to have been to keep the census bureaucracy small and fast, rather than cost-effective. By way of contrast, in Europe, where census bureaus tended to be permanent institutions, punch-card processing was only used as a temporary or transitional expedient.

In the middle third of the book, Heide traces the dissemination of punch-card technology into new industries and new national contexts. In this he is particularly successful: following the current focus on transnational (rather than simply comparative or international) flows of technology, he integrates technical, political, cultural, and economic dimensions into a nuanced study of the movement of technology and practices back and forth between Europe and the United States.

Heide’s attention to transnationalism, combined with his facility with the European sources and languages, proves particularly valuable to his discussion of the use of punch-card technology in the development of national registration systems in the 1930s. The story of the transformation of the original Hollerith Tabulating Machine Company into the International Business Machines Company in the 1920s is widely known, as is the role of the Social Security Act of 1935 in the creation of a massive federal bureaucracy built primarily around IBM punch-card technology. This was, for Heide, the last moment of closure for punch-card technology...