News & Events 2006-2007

Hollerith Lecture Series Continues

William Hindle ’74, president of HindlePower, Inc., was the featured speaker at the Herman Hollerith lecture series on Tuesday, February 13, in Cowan Auditorium. His topic for the evening posed the question, “Entrepreneurship: is it in you or not?”

This lecture series was established by Richard Hollerith, Jr., parent of Susan Hollerith Cashin ’85, and named in memory of Richard Hollerith’s grandfather – entrepreneur and engineer Herman Hollerith (inventor of the punch card). Herman, the son of German immigrants, graduated from the Columbia College School of Mines in 1879. He followed one of his professors to Washington, D.C., to work as a special agent on the U.S. Census of 1880. Shortly thereafter, he invented punch cards to help automate the census. In 2000, The Economist magazine identified the event of Hollerith’s tabulating machine system as one of the 10 most important events in science and technology in the last 100 years, as it marked the beginning of today’s data processing industry.

Updated 2/15/07

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