Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 72, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1919 — MACHINES TO DO WORK IN CENSUS [ARTICLE]

MACHINES TO DO WORK IN CENSUS

Wonderful Devices to Tabulate and Record Figures on Population and Industry. QUIZ BEGINS IN APRIL, 1920 Government Already Has Begun the Job of Assembling Its Plans and Forces—One Machine Handles 150,000 Cards in Eight Hours. Washington.—With hostilities at an end. the government is now laying the basis for one of the greatest of its peace-time tasks —the decennial inventory of the United States, its people, lands, industry and live stock that is called the census. Secretary of Commerce Redfield the other day signed the order that transferred one of the largest of the temporary war buildings put up in Washington, that formerly housing the army's department of aeronautics, to Director of the Census Kogers and his staff. Actually, the government began the Job some time ago, assembling Us plans and forces. By law, the beginning of the census period of 1920 is July 1, 1919, though it will not be until a year from April that the enumerators will be set at work. . There will be twenty-nine questions in the 1920 census, according to the present design of Director Rogers’ dummy cards, which now are being given the exhaustive study of statist!? cans. The more complex questionnaires that go to industrial establishments. schools, farms and every other permanent Institution of the country are likewise in the development stage, undergoing critical examination In the light of experience the government has gained In conducting thirteen inventories of the kind. Will Be Machine Operation. Chiefly the bureau ig engaged in-pre-paringfor the classification ami tabulation of the vast quantity of material which will be assembled. The 1920

census tabulation will be for the first time almost completely a machine operation, conducted by means of devices useful only to the census bureau of the United States which have been invented and are now being built by men In its employ. Electric—machines will first transfer the written informationcoming in on the enumerators’ sheets To cards, not by writing, but by punching holes at proper points. Then the punched cards will be handed in their millions to another battery of machines. the tabulators, an amazing product of human ingenuity. K. M. Boltenux, who devised them, has been with the census bureau.for eighteen years and is now superintending the construction of twenty-five machines, the operation of which he will direct. These tabulators, working with smooth and silent perfection, take in--400 cards a minute, count them, reject all that are Imperfect or Improperly punched In any fashion and take off the totals of punch marks, assembling the final result in printed figures on handy sheets. Due of them the other day in eight hours handled 150,000 cards. Look Like Office Furnitube. The machines resemble in outward aspect a piece of office furniture. Cards go into a metallic magazine at their top. travel a few inches on metal guides, come out neatly stacked with the mistakes of the punching machines —-which have merely human operators —pointed out. The printed records of the eighteen or twenty totals that the punch marks indicate come out from another slot, and the instrument stands ready to repeat. With these machines, there is a practical assurance that the publications of the censtis, usually coming out a long time after the enumeration, may he more quickly at hand to guide and demonstrate the progress -of national civilization. They are being produced largely by the work of youthful apprentices from Washington schools which have vocational courses.