the oldest item is a set of what are called napier's bones, small ivory counting sticks from the 17th century. the most recent thing we have is an iphone, the first model. we are in the punchcard gallery. behind me you see a replica of an eight t 90 census machine. -- 1890 census machine. the bureau of the census had just finished the census, which requires a census to be taken every 10 years. the 1890 census was not going to be completed in time. so someone came up with a method to do this mechanically. typically way this system works was, the census taker would go out in the field and asked the usual questions, bring them back to the office, where they would be transcribed using this device, which converts the handwritten responses into machine-readable form. using this blank piece of cardboard at the top, the census clerk punches holes in the card, which correspond to the answers in the census. what he did by doing this is create the census results and move them from human readable form to machine-readable form. once he did that, he could put the punch cards inside his senses machi