Acknowledgments
Early in January 1957, Maj. Gen. S. B. Hays, The Surgeon General, United States Army, discussed with the senior author the feasibility of preparing an article such as the one that follows. It was his thought that there should be a concise but comprehensive account in nontechnical language of the development and use of tabulating equipment within the Army medical statistics program. Army medical records and statistics reach back almost 140 years, with reports published annually from 1818 with only a few interruptions. These statistics antedate those of any State in our Union or of any army, with the exception of the British whose recordkeeping began in 1816.
General Hays recalled that the Medical Department had been using mechanical tabulating equipment for 40 years. He knew of the use of this equipment by the Medical Department in 1888 and that at that time, the [Hollerith IBM] electrical tabulating equipment was very primitive, partially hand operated, and in its developmental stage. The account of its use by the Medical Department illustrates clearly the 70 years' development of this important accounting machine equipment from its primitive beginning to its present highly efficient state.
