As time went on, computers were used more. People get bored easily doing the same thing over and over. Imagine spending your life writing things down on index cards, storing them, and then having to go find them again. The U.S. Census Bureau in 1890 had hundreds of people doing just that. It was expensive, and reports took a long time. Then an engineer worked out how to make machines do a lot of the work. Herman Hollerith invented a tabulating machine that would automatically add up information that the Census bureau collected. The Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (which later became IBM) made his machines. They leased the machines instead of selling them. Makers of machines had long helped their users understand and repair them, and CTR's tech support was especially good.