Hollerith tabulator. View of a Hollerith tabulator in use in the 1890s. This was a system for electromechnically handling punched cards (stack at lower left) for data processing. The tabulator was invented by the American computer scientist Herman Hollerith (1860-1929). The machine could process 80 punched cards a minute and was used to process the data from the 1890 American census with great success. Hollerith adapted the system for commercial use and founded the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896. This was a forerunner of the modern International Business Machine Corporation (IBM).