Gustav Tauschek
Encyclopedia
Gustav Tauschek in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
) was an Austrian
Austrians
Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....
pioneer of Information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
and developed numerous improvements for punched card
Punched card
A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...
-based calculating machines
Calculating machine
A calculating machine is a machine designed to come up with calculations or, in other words, computations. One noted machine was the Victorian British scientist Charles Babbage's Difference Engine , designed in the 1840s but never completed in the inventor's lifetime...
from 1922 to 1945.
Biography
During the years 1926 – 1930 he worked for theRheinische Metallwaren- und Maschinenfabrik
Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall AG is a German automotive and defence company with factories in Düsseldorf, Kassel and Unterlüß. The company has a long tradition of making guns and artillery pieces...
(Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall AG is a German automotive and defence company with factories in Düsseldorf, Kassel and Unterlüß. The company has a long tradition of making guns and artillery pieces...
) in Sömmerda
Sömmerda
Sömmerda is a town near Erfurt in Thuringia, Germany, on the Unstrut river. It is the capital of the district of Sömmerda.-History:Archeological digs in the area that is now Sömmerda, formerly Leubingen, have uncovered prominently buried human remains dating to around 2000 BCE...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, where he developed a complete punched card
Punched card
A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...
-based accounting system
System
System is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole....
, which was never mass-produced. The prototype
Prototype
A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...
of that system
System
System is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole....
is currently stored in the archives of the Vienna Technical Museum
Technisches Museum Wien
The Technisches Museum Wien lies in Vienna , in Penzing district, on the Mariahilferstraße 212....
.
In the spring of 1928, Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall AG is a German automotive and defence company with factories in Düsseldorf, Kassel and Unterlüß. The company has a long tradition of making guns and artillery pieces...
created a subsidiary company that was assigned to develop new punched card
Punched card
A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...
-based machines. In the fall of the same year, the subsidiary was bought by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, thereby assuring its monopoly on the market. Tauschek was awarded a five-year contract and sold 169 patents
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
to IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
in his life-time.
Gustav Tauschek died of an embolism
Embolism
In medicine, an embolism is the event of lodging of an embolus into a narrow capillary vessel of an arterial bed which causes a blockage in a distant part of the body.Embolization is...
on February 14, 1945 in a hospital in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
.
Literature
Martin Helfert, Petra Mazuran, Christoph M. Wintersteiger: Gustav Tauschek und seine Maschinen, Linz: Trauner, 2007, in GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. (Schriftenreihe Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik; Bd. 10) ISBN 978-3-85499-062-8
Martin Helfert, Christoph M. Wintersteiger: Gustav Tauschek's Punchcard Accounting Machines, Proceedings of the Workshop on Methodic and Didactic Challenges of the History of Informatics (MEDICHI 2007), OCG 220, Austrian Computer Society, 2007.
External links
- ÖGIG Startseite at www.oegig.at Austrian Society for History of Informatics
- Technisches Museum Wien at www.tmw.at Vienna Technical Museum