A HUMAN CENSUS MACHINE

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 1207, 12 November 1919, Page 2

A HUMAN CENSUS MACHINE

THAI' CLASSIFIES INFORMATION. A test of a "human machine" was made recently in the United States Census office. The machine is called human because it performs calculations that, stump the human brain. An army of brains might accomplish the same calculations, officials say, but only in a lifetime. It was designed to tabulate results of the fifteenth Nation-wide census, preparatory work on whiqh is now beginniuji. CLASSIFIES AND PRINTS ANSWERS.

Census Bureau experts have just finished developing the machine. They have been at work since 1890. Themachine looks like an office tile, except for the electric motor on top; index cards are fed into a slot dear the motor. The cards contain answers to 30 questions to be asked each of the 110 million persons in the United States. The machine classifies these answers, then it prints them in tabular form on a big sheet of paper. The machine eats up cards at the rate of 390 a minute. E. M. L. 13. is,given credit for developing the machine. He's .chief of the Census Bureau's machinery. He's been in the bureau 13 years. His name is being withheld from publication at his request. " I don't want to claim credit for the whole job," he said to-day. E. M. L. B. stopped to pull at his pipe. He's tall, with greying hair. His real name is well known to friends and workers in the Bureau. But to newspapers and magazines he remains only four initials.

HANDLES A BILLION CARDS. To give an idea of the magnitude of tiie job, bureau officials say that nearly a billion cards must be handled and classified. Although the population is estimated at only 110 millions at this count, many cards will have to be made out several times in Washington. The cards will be compiled here from information obtained- by thousands of enumerators who will "go into every homo in the country. Then they'll be turned over to the hundreds of girl clerks, who will punch holes in them to represent the answers to various questions concerning occupations, parentage, age, color, and all the other personal facts with which the census deals. It is these holes that make it possible for the human machine to do its calculating and classifying work. Each card probably will be "handled eight tiiu'vs during the process. Before the Cei wiis Bureau perfected the machine some of the information collected by the Census Bureau never was completely classified and tabulated. Another machine designed especially for the Census Bureau is called tho automatic sorter. There is a long trough, a belt moves along it. At one end is a box of wheels and a series of nine piano wires. Below the trough are 13 boxes. Cards feed into the machine at one end, travel along the belt, and drop into the boxes. In this way cards can be sorted into various boxes according to 13 general heads, such as occupation, age, color, nativity, etc.'