On January 8, 1889, U.S. Patent No. 395,781 issued to Herman Hollerith on the Art of Compiling Statistics:

Herman Hollerith was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in accounting. Hollerith founded a company that was combined with several other companies to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. In 1924, the company was renamed “International Business Machines.”

At one time Hollerith cards were ubiquitous in computing centers. Computer technology has moved on, but that does not diminish the importance of Hollerith’s role in computer technology.