When asked how he first had the idea of a census machine he would reply "chicken
salad" and then explain. When he first came to Washington he joined a boat club and
often rowed on the Potomac River. The club once had an evening entertainment at
which one of Dr. Billings' daughters, seeing father enjoying the chicken salad, invited
him to come to supper with them to have some of her mother's salad. It was at this
supper that Dr. Billings suggested the need for a machine to do the purely mechanical
work of tabulating population and similar statistics. Father talked the matter over
with Dr. Billings, who suggested using cards with the description of the individual
shown by notches in the edge of the card and a device something like a type-distributing
machine. Father went to Mr. Leland, who was in charge of the Population Division of
the Census Office, and asked to be taken on as a clerk to learn the nature of the job.
After studying the problem, father told Dr. Billings "to go in with him," but he was not
interested; his only wish was to see the problem solved