The tabulating machines Herman Hollerith provided the 1890 census had already developed beyond his original idea. His cards provided spaces into which the operator could use Hollerith's key punch to enter forty discrete items. Clipping one corner of the cards prevented their being entered upside down or backward. Once punched, the cards went to the tabulator machine operator, who used a hand-operated press. The upper portion of the press had retractable pins in each position where holes could be punched in the card. Wherever the press found a hole, the pins completed a circuit that moved a dial by one unit. The machine was not limited to counting only forty facts. Hollerith used electrical wiring on the back of the tabulator to connect two or more categories that were registered on separate dials. The first run of the cards produced seventy possible combinations of data.

Hollerith expanded the analytic capacity of his machine by using a sorting box divided into compartments. As the tabulator counted the seventy combinations, operators chose cards with certain characteristics, perhaps race or sex or citizenship, and placed them into the compartments to be run through the machine later. In 1890, the cards were run through the tabulator seven more times to complete the tables of correlations the census director desired. For the 1900 census, Hollerith provided a vertical sorter that automatically dropped the cards into the chosen boxes. The 1900 tabulator also incorporated an adding machine, permitting it to add quantities as well as count units.

In adapting his machine for commercial and industrial use, Hollerith had to change his cards to record numbers, rather than the specific items of information the census required. To do so, he modified his card to use the entire surface, not just the edges. He divided the card into vertical columns, each having the numerals from 0 to 9; groups of columns could be assigned as needed to record relevant numbers. In the New York Central Railroad's case, the first five columns of the card registered weights of shipments; additional columns recorded other data or prices. Hollerith's system could now be adjusted to suit various industrial and commercial enterprises.

Machines were custom-built to suit the needs of the user. Until 1906, the electrical connections needed to correlate data required hand-soldering to process new combinations of data, a time-consuming process. Hollerith automated the changes by providing a plug board, permitting easy switching of the wires, effectively creating a process of physical programming that prefigured electronic programming of computers.

Hollerith's tabulator made it possible for the U.S. Census to complete future decennial head counts in time for the constitutionally mandated reapportionment of the House of Representatives. Counting by hand could not have kept up with the rapidly increasing American population. As Hollerith improved his machines, it became possible not only to count but also to correlate data. One could now easily determine how many families were headed by two parents, how many children were in each family, and what language they spoke, or any other combination of desired characteristics. The superintendent of the 1890 census boasted that for the first time it had been possible to produce the most complicated tables as easily as the simplest, providing invaluable information for governments, social scientists, and industry.

The improved machines proved particularly useful to managers of the increasingly large and complicated American business enterprises. After the New York Central Railroad used tabulators in 1896 to keep track of freight shipments, railway companies discovered even more ways the machines helped in running day-to-day operations and providing easily retrievable business information. Hollerith's cost-accounting machines transformed the fields of commercial bookkeeping and industrial accounting. Department stores depended upon the machines for sales analysis. Insurance companies used hundreds of thousands of cards to keep track of their policies. Hollerith's machines expanded female employment opportunities, since the devices were as easy to use as a typewriter.

For the first time, business as well as government could process massive amounts of information efficiently, economically, and in time to be of use. Until replaced by computers, for which Hollerith's tabulators were a significant forerunner, his machines would be indispensable for data processing.

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