Senior Class Album Committee Using Almost Human Machine To Tabulate Answers to Poll Blanks, Donald Thurber States

"It does everything but think," Donald M. D. Thurber '40 stated yesterday while tending the machine that the Class Album Committee is using to tabulate the results of the Thurber Poll.

Resembling a lathe, the tabulator, rented by the University from the International Business Machines Company, adds, subtracts, multiplies, finds averages, makes lists, cross-correlates figures from different items of the poll, and would probably turn hand-springs, if the right buttons were pressed.

"With such-and-such an income, what is the attitude of students toward the New Dial?" This cross-correlation question would be answered by a coefficient of correlation printed on a roll of paper which continually unwinds at one end of the tabulator when the machine is being run.

A typewriter punch machine is used to prepare the cards which are fed into the tabulator. It punches holes in the cards at places that represent all information gathered about a student by his answers on the poll.

A third machine, called a sorter, arranges the cards into groups to be fed into the tabulator. If might group together and total all cards filled out by students who concentrate in History, or those of all men who are in Group IV of the Rank List.