Leo Wenzel Pollak (1888-1964): Czechoslovakian pioneer in scientific data processing

A few years ago, the author wrote a report about the development of the Hollerith Punched Card System (F.W. Kistermann, 1995). One section dealt with the application of punched cards in science and engineering. Looking at the literature of this field in Europe, the author found the name of Leo Wenzel Pollak in Prague in the 1934 Hollerith Nachrichten, the customer journal of the Berlin DEHOMAG Company (L.W. Pollak and F. Kaiser, 1934). Pollak's paper turned out to be the culmination of seven years' intensive use of punched cards in scientific data processing-a project that has, so far, not been appreciated in the history of data processing.