Editing Powers Accounting Machine (section)

==Development==
===Census Bureau {{anchor|History}}===
In 1890, the government began leasing tabulating machines from [[Herman Hollerith]]'s [[Tabulating Machine Company]], to more efficiently, expansively, and accurately produce the national census. In 1900, Hollerith raised the lease pricing. This led the newly formed U.S. Census Bureau to seek other suppliers under its new director, Simon North, in 1903. North returned most of Hollerith's machines, and the Census Bureau began using [[Charles Felton Pidgin|Charles F. Pidgin]]'s tabulators. These machines proved too slow, so the Bureau undertook to develop its own machine for the 1910 census.<ref name="early-machines" /> North secured a $40,000 appropriation for the project.<ref name="Georgia" />

===James Powers{{anchor|JamesPowers}}===
{{Main|James Legrand Powers}}
James Legrand Powers<ref name=census-history/> was a mechanical engineer. He was born in Odessa, Russia, in 1871, and graduated from the Technical School of Odessa. He emigrated to the United States in 1889.<ref name=Georgia />

The Census Bureau hired him as a technician in 1907 to help develop the competing tabulating machine. He had already done early experimental work in office machines, and had several patents to his name.<ref name=Encyclopedia />

Although Hollerith had numerous patents for his tabulators, Powers managed to avoid infringement, by using mechanical sensors on the punch readers, instead of electrical sensors. The new machine was faster, cheaper, more accurate, less error-prone, and less wasteful than Hollerith's or Pidgin's, while maintaining compatibility with Hollerith's [[punched card]] format.<ref name=Georgia /><ref name=census-history/>
<ref name=gap/><ref name=SciAm /> The key advantages of the new machine were feeder mechanisms, and the "whole card punch," an improvement over the character-by-character punch of earlier designs. A second machine was also developed by W. W. Lasker, to automate printing results.<ref name=Georgia />

Powers secured a patent for his version of the tabulating machine, which allowed him to later create a business around the technology he had invented.<ref name=census-history/>

A prolific inventor, he did not restrict himself to office machinery. See, for example, the ''Germproof Drinking Cup''.<ref>The American Stationer and Office Outfitter (April 13, 1918) ''Unique machine for Making Paper Cups'' p.32</ref> The inventor was a member of the Machinery Club and the American Society of Mechanical Engineering through the time of his death on Tuesday, November 8, 1927, at age 57. The New York Times ran a brief paid obituary two days later.<ref name="NYT" />

===First usage===
The United States Census Bureau tested the machine in the real world by allowing the Cuban government to conduct its census in 1908-1909 using prototypes of the new tabulating machine.<ref name=SciAm />