Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 148, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1910 — TABULATING CENSUS RETURNS. [ARTICLE]

TABULATING CENSUS RETURNS.

Mechanism of Machines Which Are Labor and Time Savers. The automatic machine is the most recent development in census tabulating machinery, and had it been perfected earlier much of the hand machines could have been dispensed with, though, in most cases where readings must be taken very frequently, the hand machines are almost, if not quite, as economical. Whether in the hand machine or in the’ automatic, the counters are operated by means of electrical contacts made through the punched holes, according to-E: Dana Durand in the American Review of Reviews. The machines are so wired that .facts can be counted in combination with one another. Thus it is possible to count at the same time facts with regard to age and marital condition, so as to show, for instance, on one counter the number of married persons from 21 to 25 years oj age, on another those from 25 to 30, and on others the number of single persons of these two age periods. Each machine, In fact, is provided with a large number of counters; as many as sixty counters will be used in certain "runs.” Even thus, however, it would be quite impossible to count all the manifold combinations of items at a single "run” of the card. Each card on the average must be passed through the tabulating machines five or six times. In other words, the work is equivalent to tabulating approximately 500,000 cards. Even the hand machines used at the present census are much more rapid than those of ten years ago. In 1900 the counters used consisted of dials, from each of which the results for each county or other unit of presentation had to be read by the eye and taken down on sheets of paper. The present machines are so arranged that the results on all the counters can be printed at the some time by merely pressing a button. This change absolutely prevents errors, which frequently arose in the reading of the dials, and also greatly economizes clerical labor.