Why is the punched card machine so important?

Before the age of computers, automatic data processing was handled mainly by punched card machines. What is punched card? You must have seen a bus conductor punching a hole in your ticket at a specific place. This is to indicate the stage at which you entered the bus. On the same way, we can punch holes on a card to store information.

The age of punched card machines is believed to have started in 1890, when Mr.Herman Hollerith designed the first punched card machines for the population census of the United States. He was inspired by the punched card programming of a weaving machine, and chose the punched card as the basis for storing and processing information.

The system of encoding data on cards through a series of punched holes proved useful in statistical work, and was important in the development of the digital computer. Herman Hollerith himself, is widely regarded as the father of modern automatic computation