JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2229           History of Holes series

I’ve written elsewhere in this History of Holes series about holes and electricity and the Jacquard loom and early tabulating machines–but I’ve never seen anything in-print from this period of time using the word “holes” to promote a tabulating device.  And here it is in a Remington Rand promotional for scouting field service technicians, and printed ca., 1946:

Remington Rand at one time was Remington Arms, and then diversified to produce all manner of light and heavy electrical goods (and of course famously producing the standard U.S. Army sidearm, the 45-calber Remington M1911 pistol), and by the end of WWII the company produced a vast line of tabulating equipment (of another order of high caliber).  Interestingly the pamphlet exclaims that a person working for RR could work there for as long as they wanted, that the company was there to stay.  

Certainly the company would hang on for some time in one form or another, but the tabulating card division was about to change drastically.  In 1950 RR purchased Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company (ENIAC) and a few years later (1952) secured another giant computer pioneer, Engineering Research Associates (ERA), making Remington Rand about the largest computer company in the world. RR would be purchased a few years later by Sperry in 1955, becoming Sperry Rand, and then simply Sperry a short time after that; later, in 1986, Sperry would merge with Burroughs and become Unisys. Somewhere in there all of these tabulating machine repairmen and techs hired fresh in 1946 would be out of their lifetime job less than a decade later.  

[“Typical office installations of Remington Rand equipment”]