How the tools built to conduct the U.S. Census fueled Nazi genocide, internment, and state-sanctioned racism — and helped usher in the digital age — On a freezing day in December 1896, an American inventor by the name of Herman Hollerith rushed to catch a train out of the Russian city of St. Petersburg. He wore a fur cap and a thick fur-lined coat with a huge collar buttoned up all the way over his…