What Happened on November 17th

Herman Hollerith dies of a heart attack at age 69. Hollerith's experience before he was 30 -- at the US Census Bureau and US Patent Office and as instructor in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- set the stage for inventing the successful card system for the 1890 census.

After this achievement, Hollerith set up his Tabulating Machine Co. in 1896. In 1911 it became the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co., which Thomas Watson, Sr. joined in 1914. A decade later it became International Business Machines.