From Horseback to the Internet

Last year, your family probably received a census form in the mail from the U.S. government that asked questions about who lives in your house and the town in which you live. It wasn't always that simple.

During the first U.S. census in 1790, under the direction of Thomas Jefferson, federal marshals traveled by horseback from town to town to count the U.S. population in each state. The newly formed U.S. government used this data to pay back the states for the expenses of the Revolutionary War. Also, they had to comply with the mandate of the U.S. Constitution that a census is taken every 10 years.

Technology has also changed the census. In 1890 the U.S. began using simple machines to tabulate census data. For Census 2000, high power computers are tabulating the data collected by the census questionnaires, which were sent by mail to American households.

Census 2000 also introduced limited use of the Internet to gather census data. Yet even today some aspects of the census remain low-tech.: 860,000 census workers visited many households in person to collect census questionnaires.