James L. Powers

James Powers, c. 1915

James Legrand Powers (1871, Odessa - November, 8, 1926, New York) - American inventor and entrepreneur, the founder of Powers Accounting Machine Company.

Biography

James Legrand Powers was born in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) in 1871. He graduated from Odessa Technical School and worked in Odessa University mechanical shop. In 1889 he emigrated to the United States and was employed by various engineering concerns including Western Electric.

In 1907 Powers was hired by US Census Bureau as a mechanical expert to modify unit record equipment invented two decades earlier by Herman Hollerith [1]. Hollerith's equipment was successfully used for 1890 and 1900 US Censuses, but when Hollerith refused to lower the rental fees for Census Bureau, Bureau's director S.N.D.North did not renew the contract with Hollerith's company, instead creating the Census Machine Shop [2]. Powers had already done some experimental work on office machines and received several patents. He managed to circumvent Hollerith's patents (see Inventions section) and introduced new punched card equipment which was used in 1909 Cuban Census and 1910 US Census [3].

Powers Accounting Machine Company

Powers founded his company in 1911 as Powers Tabulating Machine Company but later changed its name for Powers Accounting Machine Company. Founded in Newark, New Jersey, the company was moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1914.

By 1914 Powers Accounting Machine Company is said to have subsidiaries in Germany, Bulgaria, and Italy; however, the information about them is scarce. German and Bulgarian subsidiaries are said to be closed during the First World War. Nevertheless, German agency was refounded in 1923.

In 1915 Prudential Building Society founded Accounting and Tabulating Company of Great Britain which sold Powers machines. French subsidiary called SAMAS (a.k.a. S.A.M.A.S. for Societe Anonyme des Machines a Statistiques) was established in 1922, alongside with Belgian agency in 1919 [4].

In 1927 the Remington Typewriter Company and the Rand Kardex Corporation merged, forming Remington Rand Inc. which acquired the Powers Accounting Machine Company within a year. After several more merges the company is known nowadays as Unisys Corporation.

Death date

James Powers died on 8 November, 1926, and the obituary appeared in New York Times two days later [5]. Since Powers was not famous, his death went almost unnoticed, which later caused discrepancies. According to Encyclopedia of Computer Science article, Powers died around 1935 [1].

Inventions

Mechanical hole-sensing unit Herman Hollerith's tabulating equipment used electric reading unit in which the perforations in cards made and broke the electric current, thus allowing current to add numbers on the counters. Since Hollerith was the originator of the technology, his patents protected electric card reading technique, which meant that the Census Bureau couldn't use it without infringing Hollerith's patents.

Powers, a renowned inventor, devised a mechanical sensing unit which in action was similar to a typewriter. For reading, a set of rods fixed on springs fell on a card. Rods went through the holes of the card and pushed the buttons placed under. These buttons acted as an input mechanism connected mechanically to a set of counters or a sorting device. Thus Powers managed to invent his own system which bear no resemblance with Hollerith's one. The system included the whole set of machines, necessary for tabulating, namely, electric card punch, card verifier, sorting machine and printing tabulator.

Printing tabulator Hollerit tabulators were non-printing, displaying numbers on a row of mechanical counters. This caused pauses during tabulating, as it was necessary to write totals by hand.

Electric card punch In 1907 Powers was detailed to work out an automatic card-punching machine. This machine, as developed and improved over the next 2 years, seemed to be satisfactory, and 300 of these machines were used during 1910 US Census []. However, this model proved to be error-prone and was dismissed during the Census. Several years after Powers Accounting Machine Company advertised several different types of electric card punches [].

Punch card verifier In 1915 Powers introduced the first card verifier, which was used to check the correctness of punching [].

Patents

US992245 Combined Punching and Counting Mechanism

US992246 Perforating Machine

US1086397 Keyboard for Perforating Machines and the like

US1100986 Perforating Machine

US1138314 Perforating Machine

US1177651 Stop Mechanisms for Card Sorting Machines

US1224413 Combined Printing Mechanism and Perforating-Machine

US1236481 Card Accounting Machine

US1242721 Repeat Perforating Mechanism

US1245502 Tabulator-Printer for Statistical Purposes

US1271614 Combined Type Writer and Perforating Machine

US1299022 Perforating Machine

US1312807 Counter for Accounting Machines

US1317458 Card-Feed-Actuated Stop

US1388299 Combined Perforating and Printing Tabulator Mechanism

US1665218 Feeding Mechanism for Tabulating Machine

US1836039 Self Starting Automatic Total Taking Mechanism

Sources

• Stan Augarten. Bit by Bit. An Illustrated History of Computers. (Ticknor & Fields, 1984).

1. Martin Campbell-Kelly. Powers, James in Encyclopedia of Computer Science (4th edition) edited by Edwin D. Reilly, Anthony Ralston, David Hemmendinger. (John Wiley and Sons Ltd, 2003)

• Martin Campbell-Kelly. Chapter Four: Punched-Card Machinery in Computing Before Computers edited by William Aspray. (Iowa State University Press, 1990)