Herman Hollerith's Self-Propelled Stoat Catcher

After the success of his Tabulating Machine in the reading and counting of the 1890 United States Census, Herman Hollerith began considering other uses for his tabulation machine and the punched-card system. After considering various possible uses, Herman became interested in the idea of creating a self-controlled roving machine, capable of operating independently from external instructions. The machine was to be controlled by the same punched-card system as the Tabulation Machine.

At this point, Herman became inexplicably interested in the pursuit and capture of Stoats. It is still unsure as to how he became interested in this particular past time. The sport of Stoat-Catching (or Grogbodogivalkoia to give it’s proper Albanian name), traditionally done with implements resembling lacrosse sticks (known as Borisiztrousa) and using live gerbils as bait had been introduced to the United States by Albanian immigrants during the 1850s, but had largely died out by the 1880s. (One can only wonder if Herman had played this sport when young).

Herman decided to construct his roving machine as a Self-Propelled Stoat Catcher. The Self-Propelled Stoat Catcher (or SPSC as it came to be known to the development team.) was operated by punched cards fed into the back of the machine. These cards contained the parameters for the Stoat-Catching match. This included the terrain, the boundaries of the match, and the numbers of stoats expected. The machine would read the cards, and behave accordingly.

The machine was powered by a complex clockwork motor that provided power for the wheels and the main computer. It also provided power for the Gerbil-dispenser that was mounted on the front of the machine. The two lower tubes were an experimental Stoat-vacuum, that would suck up the captured stoat, and put it in the main Stoat Hopper (shown here with the lit open). Two stoat-grabber arms as well as a top-mounted crane meant that the machine could handle even the most stubborn of Stoats.

Unfortunately, the Self-Propelled Stoat Catcher was less than a rousing success. In the field, it tended to jar easily, putting its mechanisms out of order and rendering it immobile or unable to act. The biggest problem, however, was its operating system. The numbers of punched cards needed to convey all the necessary information was staggering, and the machine required immense amounts of preparation before being put into use. Usually, it ended up immobile, caught in an unexpected rabbit hole, rammed into a tree it hadn’t accounted for or suffering some other mishap. Herman himself realised the folly of the experiment, and cut it short before it ended up costing him too much money. He then had the sole prototype scrapped, and most records of it destroyed. Clearly Herman was embarrassed by this machine, as he stated in his unfinished 1929 Autobiography My Life As A Saucy Squirrel "But I don’t even like Stoats!"

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