History

Technology

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Auto Tabulating Machine.
Photo courtesy of the National Archives. The Census Bureau continuously improve the speed and accuracy of the census-taking process in response to the ever-increasing population of the United States. Since its inception, the Census Bureau has been at the forefront of technological advancement in data processing and publication.

The punch card was developed by Hermann Hollerith to speed up the tallying of the 1890 census. The Census Bureau used the first modern computer UNIVAC, to tabulate the 1950 census.

The development by the Census Bureau of geographic base files in the 1970s and the TIGER system in the 1980s laid the groundwork for today's geographic information system industry.

The early adoption of the computer tape in the 1970s, CD-ROM technology in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990s made Census Bureau information widely available to a growing number of data users.