What standardized format did Herman Hollerith establish for data recording?
Answer
The 80-column card format.
Herman Hollerith's contribution included not just the electromechanical reader but also establishing a universally accepted physical specification for data entry. He successfully settled on the 80-column card format during his development leading up to the 1890 U.S. Census. This specific physical layout, designed to hold a certain number of coded data points corresponding to the questionnaire structure, became the de facto standard for data recording and input across numerous industries and computing applications for the subsequent decades.
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