When a card was inserted into the tabulating machine, the counters would be updated accordingly, and the appropriate drawer in the sorting machine would open.

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Hollerith also invented a sorting machine, to facilitate the tabulation of subsets of the population.

ECONOMIST: Millennium issue

Richmond was infected after a mail-sorting machine was cleaned with a high pressure hose.

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Mr Griffiths was wearing gloves when he tried to clear the blockage in the potato sorting machine while it was running on 5 December, 2011.

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It led eventually to Fiat, where his first job was sorting out the sale of a machine-tool subsidiary in the early 1960s.

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