A tabulator is an electromechanical counting machine that can read and sort information encoded on punch cards. The first data processing computer was invented specifically for the American population census. The following year, the tabulator was put into practice and the result was amazing: Hollerith and forty-three of his assistants managed to count everything in four weeks using forty-three tabulators. During the previous census, five hundred clerks had to work for five years to complete this task. Tabulators spread around the world and even in Russia, and Hollerith established a company to manufacture them, which later served as a foundation for the famous IBM.