[1] In 1907, Powers was hired by the US Census Bureau as a mechanical expert to modify unit record equipment invented two decades earlier by Herman Hollerith.
By 1914, Powers Accounting Machine Company is said to have subsidiaries in Germany, Bulgaria, and Italy; however, the information about them is scarce.
In 1915, the Prudential Building Society founded Accounting and Tabulating Company of Great Britain which sold Powers's machines.
for Société Anonyme des Machines à Statistiques) was established in 1922, alongside the Belgian agency in 1919.
Mechanical hole-sensing unit Hollerith's tabulating equipment employed an electric sensing unit in which perforations in cards acted as "make and break" electric switches, thus allowing current to pass and energize electromagnetic counters.
Despite their complexity, they were largely deployed by insurance companies because of their ability to produce written spreadsheets.
Powers Accounting Machine Company was the only producer of printing tabulators until IBM introduced its own version in 1920.
Several years later Powers Accounting Machine Company advertised different types of electric card punches.