Show machines that are almost human 1 dy by E C TAYLOR census tabulators hin t itow many married maled men are there ia in the united states who are under thirty five years of 0 age married and own automobiles that cost less than SUM or again how many heads beads of families were jobless at the time th the e I 1 last ast census was taken have bare their own homes that cost less than 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 sold gold their crops at a loss last year but have some money laid away and are not worrying about the future these and many other questions can be answered by the census tabulators which are electric devices for tabulating statistics these machines machine make it possible to learn facts within a few hours or days that formerly took months or years to ascertain when men rind and women did the work they are operated like adding machines except that instead of an operator punching keys beys 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 wanted to know whether they had bad jobs if they lived in cities or towns whether their farms paid them a profit whether they owned automobiles 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 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 have automobiles or radios or who had some money in the bank the government wanted to know how bow the people of the country were prospering and how they lived there Is nothing like statistics to tell such a story the government ern in ent believed and it set about the task of finding out after previous censuses thousands thousand of men and women spent months and years compiling statistics as 89 to the various groups in the country how bow many were farmers how many reste residents d n t 5 of t the h e united states were ere born in this country how many were of school age the government made no effort to learn how bow many had radios and automobiles until the census of 1930 A score of questions were added to the former list asked by census enumerators it 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 atwould it would have required years to total all that the 1930 census had bad disclosed about the condition ot 0 the people of the united states so the electric statistics tabulating device was put to work and it ha has greatly simplified the gigantic task of finding out how the people of the united states live the answers each man woman and child in the united states gave to the questions asked by the enumerators were recorded by holes on c cards the position of the holes on each card indicated whether the answer was yes or no to each question and also what each question was nothing was written on the cards they were simply punched with the answers to find out the answers to any set of questions such as are asked above the operator of the machine on only ly had to set the proper triggers and gadgets so that only the facts he be wanted to know would be recorded and start the machine the cards are dropped into the machine by the and shoot through at B R whirling pace the machine selects only the cards hearing bearing the proper answers and dumps them into a separate container they are then run through a counting machine and the task Is completed it looks easy when you yon see the machine operating A task that required hundreds of times as long and huDd hundreds reds of times as many operators Is performed accurately and simply it Is another example of how science has produced a machine to do a tedious difficult and wearying task accurately and with skill ca a 1931 2931 Weir tern newspaper New paper union I 1 |