The census machine was invented by Herman Hollerith. Herman Hollerith was an American inventor who developed a punched card tabulating machine based on the Jacquard loom principles. He invented the machine in the late 19th century to help process and analyze data from the US census, which had grown too large and complex to be handled manually. The machine used punched cards to store and process data, and it was able to process information much faster than human operators. This invention laid the foundation for modern data processing and is considered a major milestone in the history of computing.