Herman Hollerith (Early 20th Century)

Herman Hollerith was a German-American statistician who developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards to rapidly tabulate statistics from millions of pieces of data. He was the founder of the company that became IBM.

He invented the first automatic card-feed mechanism and the first key punch (that is, a punch operated by a keyboard); a skilled operator could punch 200–300 cards per hour. He also invented a tabulator, which had a control panel that allowed it to do different jobs without being rebuilt.

Read more about Herman Hollerith on Wikipedia.