Big data has always existed. The US Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, houses 164 million items in its collection, including 24 million books and 125 million items in its non-classified collection. [Source: https://www.loc.gov/about/general-information/].

Mechanical data storage arguably first started with punch cards, invented by Herman Hollerith in 1880. Based loosely on prior work by Basile Bouchon, who, in 1725 invented punch bands to control looms, Hollerith's punch cards provided an interface to perform tabulations and even printing of aggregates.

IBM pioneered the industrialization of punch cards and it soon became the de facto choice for storing information.