News & Events 2002-2003

Pat and John Kennedy On Being an Entrepreneur

Pat and John Kennedy’s presentation “On Being an Entrepreneur” marked the second annual Herman Hollerith lecture on April 29, 2003 in the DuBois Theatre of Armstrong-Hipkins Center for the Arts.

The Kennedys told the story of how they started five different businesses before they finally found the right mix that allowed them to build their company into a major business. With interest and humor, they told students about how they built one of their computer applications into one of the largest businesses in this area; how they took advantage of emerging technological developments; the mistakes they made; and how, in the end, they tried to use their wealth to give back to others. At the end of the presentation, the Kennedys stayed and answered numerous questions from students, keeping the discussion going well into the evening.

This Hollerith Lecture series is named for entrepreneur and engineer Herman Hollerith. Mr. Hollerith, the son of German immigrants, graduated from the Columbia College School of Mines in 1879. He followed one of his professors to Washington, D.C. to work as a special agent on the U.S. Census of 1880. Shortly thereafter, he invented punch cards to help automate the census. These cards were the earliest widely used mechanical system for processing enormous amounts of data. Punched with holes representing numbers or other data, they were fed into a machine that converted the holes into electromechanical impulses for further tallying or processing. In 2000, Economist magazine identified the event of Hollerith’s tabulating machine system as one of the 10 most important events in science and technology in the last 100 years, as it marked the beginning of today’s data processing industry. For more information, call Dr. Martin Miller at 908-362-6121, ext. 5659.

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