Austrian, Geoffrey

Geoffrey David Austrian was born on March 31, 1930. Austrian first became interested in the life of Herman Hollerith (1860-1929), inventor of the puched-card system of data processing, while working for the International Business Machines Corporation, the firm that grew out of Hollerith's invention. Austrian stumbled across Hollerith's name during a search for background information for "IBM Day" in 1964. It was not until 1968, after a chance meeting with a member of the Hollerith family that Austrian began to formulate his ideas for a book. With the support of IBM, Austrian began work on his book in 1972. "Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information Processing" was published by the Columbia University Press in 1982. Austrian has published three other books: "The Truth about Drugs," 1971, "Dark deeds: At the U.S. Naval Observatory, They Make it their Nightly Business to Track Heavenly Bodies," 1983, and "Ben Austrian, Artist," 1997.