MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.
Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1505412
Hollerith’s punch cards and tabulating machine were a breakthrough for the U.S. Census Bureau, charged with tracking the country’s rapidly-growing population. It didn’t take other industries long to realize that there lot of other applications for this kind of tech. The company Hollerith started became a name most of us are familiar with today: IBM. Modern Times One of the real beauties of the Computer History Museum comes into its own as technology moves into the twentieth century. And this goes beyond hardware that’s far more impressive than the dials and sorting boxes of Hollerith’s era. Not only is there the usual abundance of nicely composed explanatory graphics. It didn’t take long for the computer industry to discover film and a bit later, video, as a powerful marketing and sales tool. The museum’s curators uncovered and recovered these with Indiana Jones-worthy ambition. And they’re some of the most fascinating elements of the displays. What they found in the archives also helped them promote the recognition of women in and around computing, going beyond the famed contributions of Lady Lovelace and Admiral Grace Hopper, credited with being the creator of hardware-independent programming languages. (Wherever you do your banking, it’s a safe bet that some machines are still running her creation, COBOL.) The marketing media in its various forms offer a fascinating insight into the needs and the attitudes that drove business at the time. Having spent a good chunk of my Silicon Valley days in the 80s and 90s producing and shooting this very genre, it was easy to see that though they became slicker over the years, the general approach remained pretty much unchanged, selling the the sizzle more than the steak. Counting cards