A curious Internet rumor is spreading, but it does not seem to have left the borders of Hanover:

Someone read the name “Harry Bates Thayer, [Dartmouth class of]
1879” to mean “Harry Bates, Thayer [School of Engineering Class of]
1879.” The real Harry Bates Thayer was a long-time AT&T executive, prominent leader among Dartmouth’s Trustees, and the namesake of Thayer Dining Hall. No one named “Harry Bates,” on the other hand, graduated from any branch of Dartmouth before at least 1910. The only person in Thayer’s graduating class of 1879 was Ray Gile.

What’s oddest is that “Harry Bates” got put in the shoes of Herman Hollerith, the famous punch-card man. The excellent Computing at Dartmouth timeline attributes to “Harry Bates” the 1887 design of a punch-card compiling apparatus, the incorporation of the Tabulating Machine Company, and the 1911 sale of the company, which later became IBM.

But it was Hollerith who registered “Art of Compiling Statistics,” U.S. Patent No. 395.781 (1889, filed 1887); who formed the Tabulating Machine Company (see IBM Archives Exhibit); and who sold the company in 1911.

Also picking up on “Harry Bates” are the DTSS Timeline; Here in Hanover magazine (Winter 1998) [pdf]; and the Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science (Spring 2001) [pdf].

[Update 08.09.2006: Timeline was fixed last week.]