Mobile devices for US census takers

Engad­get reports on a new Win­dows Mobile PDA that cen­sus tak­ers might use for data col­lec­tion. band­width is pro­vided by Sprint. The bat­ter­ies last 10 hours – an amaz­ing result on a PDA that is deis­gned for heavy data entry and net­work usage in the field.

The US Con­sti­tu­tion requires a national cen­sus every 10 years. One early use of Hol­lerith cards was in the 1890 US Cen­sus. The pre­vi­ous cen­sus in 1880 used man­ual meth­ods and took 9 years to com­plete. With Hollerith’s cards and tab­u­la­tion equip­ment, the Cen­sus Bureau fin­ished the 1890 count within 7 years at twice the cost of the 1880 cen­sus. The reports and data were far more com­plex and com­plete than any pre­vi­ous cen­sus, however.

I keep a stack of vin­tage Hol­lerith cards in my office, so I can remem­ber the good old days.

Tagged as: data, hardware, IBM, Microsoft, mobile, network, office, pda, USA, Windows