How 1800s census screw-ups kickstarted America’s computing industry

The US Constitution requires that a population count be conducted at the beginning of every decade. This census has always been charged with political significance, and continues to be. That’s clear from the controversies in the run-up to the 2020 census. But it’s less widely known how important the census has been in developing the US computer industry, a story that I tell in my book, Republic of Numbers: Unexpected Stories of Mathematical Americans through History. That history in