Printing tabulator Hollerith's tabulators were non-printing, displaying numbers on a row of mechanical counters. One of these tabulators, built in 1931, was The Columbia Difference Tabulator. Hollerith's first tabulators were used for the U.S. 1890 Census. After 1892, McTammany's focus shifted to voting machines and automatic vote tabulators. Many applications using unit record tabulators were migrated to computers such as the IBM 1401. Powers started to produce printing tabulators in 1911, and his machines soon gained popularity. Tabulators that could print, and with removable control panels, appeared in the 1920s. Each compartment had their votes taken individually and then given to tabulators on the tribunal. Very soon after, IBM started to modify its tabulators to facilitate this kind of computation. Applications then could be wired on separate control panels, and inserted into tabulators as needed. Tabulators built by the U.S. Census Bureau for the 1910 census could print their results. In contrast, International Computers and Tabulators planned to replace their language, CODEL, with COBOL. Tabulators were deployed at 50 per cent of polling stations at a cost of .