OCR Text |
Show Machines That Arejl Almost Human P By E . C.TA Y L O rJJ Census Tabulators HHOW many married men are there In the United States who are under un-der thirty-five years of age, married and own automobiles that cost less than $1,200? Or again, how many heads of families fam-ilies were Jobless at the time the last census was taken, have their own homes that cost less than $5,000 but are not all paid for, have children and were born In the United States? Or, how many farmers are there in the United States who own automobiles, automo-biles, sold their crops at a loss last year, but have some money laid away and are not worrying about the ta-ture? ta-ture? These and many other questions can be answered by the census tabulators, which are electric devices for tabulating tabulat-ing statistics. These machines make It possible to learn facts within a few hours or days that formerly took months or years to ascertain when men and women wom-en did the work. They are operated like adding machines, ma-chines, except that Instead of an operator oper-ator punching keys, holes In cards give off electric impulses that cause the machines automatically to register any requested set of facts. . When the 1930 census was taken, the people of the United States were asked a great many questions, not only as to age, sex, place of residence and where they were born, but as to their economic status. The government govern-ment wanted to know whether they had jobs, if they lived In cities or towns, whether their farms paid them a profit, whether they owned automobiles automo-biles and how much they cost, whether they owned their homes, and many other things to which the census enumerators found It hard to get answers. an-swers. Contrary to the belief of many who were asked such questions the Idea was not to make mailing lists of all those In the country who didn't have automobiles or radios or who .had some money In the bank. The government govern-ment wanted to know how the people of the country were prospering and how they lived. There Is nothing like statistics to tell such a story, the government gov-ernment believed, and It set about the task of finding out. After previous censuses thousands of men and women spent months and years compiling statistics as to the various groups In the country how many, were farmers, how many residents resi-dents of the United States were born In this country, how many were of school age. The government made no effort to learn how many had radios and automobiles until the census of 1030. A score of questions were added to the former list asked by census enumerators. If the old method of sorting all this data by hand, and adding It all up by punching adding machines by hand had been followed, the task would have been well-nigh hopeless. It would have required years to total all that the 1030 census had disclosed about the condition of the people of the United States. So the electric statistics tabulating device was put to work, and It has greatly simplified the gigantic task of finding out how the 120,000,000 people of the United States live. The answers each man, woman and I child In the United States gave to the questions asked by the enumerators were recorded by holes on cards. The position of the holes on each card Indicated In-dicated whether the answer wns "yes" or "no" to each question, and also what each question was. Nothing was written on the cards. They were simply sim-ply punched with the answers. To find out the answers to any set of questions such as are asked above, the operator of the machine only had to set the proper triggers nnd gadgets gad-gets so that only the facts he wanted to know would be recorded, and start the machine. The cards are dropped Into the machine ma-chine by the lnn.OOO, and shoot through nt n whirling pnee. The machine selects only the cards bearing the 1 proper answers nnd dumps them Into a separate container. They are then run through' a counting machine and the task Is completed. It looks easy when you see the machine operating. A task that required re-quired hundreds of times as long nnd hundreds of times as many operntors I Is performed accurately and simply. It Is another example of how science ' has produced a machine to do a tedious, tedi-ous, difficult and wearying task nccu-, nccu-, rately and with skill. I ((E). 1D11. Wentpm Newspaper Union.) |