Herman Hollerith: Art of Compiling Statistics, US Patent 395,782

Edition

Scan of the printed patent linked from Google Patents (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/92/a9/6b/f6aa3e4e27a35b/US395782.pdf, 1-bit, 300 dpi, seven pages). Its first three pages, the sheets of drawings, are set side by side in the image at the top, each cropped to the drawing, its heading and its signatures (the scanner’s borders and the lithographer’s imprint at the foot are left out) and kept in black and white. The specification (pages 1 to 4) is transcribed in full, word for word from the scan: an OCR made for this poster (RapidOCR) served as a base, every line was read against the page images, and the text was then compared by script with the OCR of Google Patents, each disagreement being settled on the scan (that OCR lacks several passages, which were read on the scan alone). The printed heading (“UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.” / “HERMAN HOLLERITH, OF NEW YORK, N. Y.” / “ART OF COMPILING STATISTICS.” / “SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 395,782, dated January 8, 1889.” / “Original application filed September 23, 1884, Serial No. 143,805. Divided and this application filed October 27, 1885. Renewed January 4, 1887. Again renewed September 8, 1888. Serial No. 284,938. (No model.)”) is set in the header of the poster, the byline keeping its first two dates. Normalizations: words divided at line ends are rejoined without their hyphen, except in compounds divided at their own hyphen (circuit-connections, guide-plate, twenty-five, well-known, electro-magnet, electro-magnets, counting-machine, non-conducting, record-strip, index-points); the running heads, page numbers and the line numbers of the margins are dropped; the spacing of tightly set lines is normalized (as in “(0-3) years”, “C F 3, thereby”) and “cuit - controlling”, set with spaces around its hyphen at a line end, is “circuit-controlling”; the reference letters set in italics in the print are in italics, and their primes are prime signs; the superior figure of M² is a superscript. Broken letters are read as “desire” and “No.” (in “Serial No. 284,939”), and a period followed by a speck as “Fig. 10.” The spelling and wording of the print are kept, including “templet”, “&c.”, the sentence that begins “The count items recorded by combinations” (where “To” seems meant), “both holes being the same set”, “wire marked 10”, “Serial No. 284,939” (the heading has 284,938) and the colon after “sponding pointers”. Small capitals are kept for the inventor’s name in the preamble and for the witnesses. The caption of the drawings is not a period text: it was written for this poster from the specification.

Rights

US Patent 395,782 was granted to Herman Hollerith on 8 January 1889 and printed by the United States Patent Office. In the United States, it was published before 1931, and patents are publications of the federal government. In France, its author died on 17 November 1929, before 1 January 1956 (Wikidata Q192145), so the term of protection has expired.

The USPTO states: “Subject to limited exceptions reflected in 37 CFR 1.71(d) & (e) and 1.84(s), the text and drawings of a patent are typically not subject to copyright restrictions.” (https://www.uspto.gov/terms-use-uspto-websites, section “Patent information”, retrieved 2026-09-27.)