Card sorters read portions of each card that passed through them and routed the cards to separate bins or pockets according to the data contained on the card. For example, if a tabulation of age groups was desired, punched cards containing extracts of the ages within each household were fed into the card sorter. The sorter could be "programmed" to read those columns on the card that indicate age and sort each card into bins corresponding to a pre-set age category (i.e., ages 0-6, 7-14, etc.).

Year: 1935