Radix sort
Ordenamiento Radix
- Date
- 1887 · confidence medium
- Place
- Washington, D.C., United States
- Credited to
- Herman Hollerith
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
The punched-card sorting system Hollerith developed for his tabulating machines applied, without naming it, the radix sort principle: sorting data digit by digit in successive passes. The algorithm was formalized and popularized later in the digital computer era.
The catalog already includes the Hollerith punched card (1884-1890); this entry focuses on the digit-by-digit sorting technique his machines used, later formalized as an algorithm.
What it led to
- Mechanical sorting of punched cards well into the 20th century
- Formalization of radix sort in computing (Seward, 1954)
- Linear-time sorting algorithms for integer keys