Finding Aids

Elmer A. Sperry (1860-1930) was an electrical engineer who established the Electric Light, Motor, and Car Brake Company in 1883 and then founded the Sperry Electric Mining Machine Company in 1886. After selling his patents to General Electric, he went to work for the company as a consultant. This collection includes original materials, as well as copy work from other sources and images which show Sperry's inventions; there is some ephemera, family photos, employees, and views of the Sperry Company's Brooklyn drafting rooms.

Geoffrey David Austrian (1930-) is an author and journalist. He first became interested in the life of Herman Hollerith (1860-1929), inventor of the puched-card system of data processing, while working for the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), the firm that grew out of Hollerith's invention. This collections includes the research materials Austrian used to write the book Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information Processing. Austrian's research includes notes from interviews with Hollerith family members and copies of materials from the IBM archives and other repositories, including the New York Public Library.