Come on now... it ain't that old (
)!
Actually, I was a "Data Maintenance Clerk" back in 1965 at Security Mutual Life Insurance company in Binghamton, NY. On the 7th floor was the data processing center and they had a 1401 system. It wasn't all dressed up like the pictures shown in the link, with our beast being basically two-tone gray. (IBM, in neighboring Endicott started producing certain dress color schemes (IBM blue, red, and creme; IIRC...I think I still have a can of the red somewhere here) in 1964 or so). BTW, the 1401 was considered a second-generation computer as it was mostly transistorized.
If you look at picture 2, that's a 1402 card processor on the left and right behind the women is the 1401. On the extreme right, is the 1403 chain printer. We had the 1403N1 which was the highspeed version, with a hydrolically operated acoustic hood. The "chain printer" actually printed an entire line with one stroke (unlike today's printers which print one character at a time moving back and forth to complete a line).
Also pictured in Image 2 are four tape drive systems. Much more modern than the card-based system that our 1401 handeled. As a matter of fact, our entire system was card based (80-column punch cards). My job was to handle address changes which we'd receive during the month. Boring job as I'd spend just about all day at a keypunch machine.
But, one week out of the month I'd go through just about every machine in the center, processing cards for the monthly billing. By Friday I'd have collated, sorted, and handled cards in a number of ways, getting them ready to process. You'd then put a "program stack" in front of your "load" and put them in the hopper on the left end of the 1402. Setting up the 1402 (like the collating processor) and the 1401 required me to set up the "switches and knobs" from an instruction book that was provided by the dept. programmer (in other words, I just followed procedures and didn't have much of a clue beyond that).
The 026 Keypunch machine and the collator that is shown pre-dates 1965/6. We were using 029 keypunch machines by that time. What is not well known, is that after the operator punches an card, the data list/form and the newly punched cards have to go to a second person who then inserts the deck into a "verifier" and then key in all the data the second time. Though they pretty much looked the same, the 059 Verifier "read" the holes in the previously punched card and if all the keystrokes were the same, if placed a "verification notch" in the edgd of the card. This was the system way of proof reading the work.
I remember when I was first introduced to the dataprocessing dept., my manager pointed at a chest freezer-size unit sitting in back of the 1401 and telling me it was a 4 kilobyte memory addition.... which gave us the largest operating system in the county. Believe it or not, over in Endicott, IBM was still using their first generation vacuum tube relay system to handle payroll. It required a couple of full-time technicians to keep it running.
I didn't see it in the linked article, and I don't really recall (for sure, anyway) how much "memory" the 1401 had... but I seem to recall that with the extra 4 K module, we had a total of around 12 or 16 kilobytes (not Mega or Giga) of core memory. By contrast, our first home computer was an Atari 800 with 48 kilobytes, 4-channel sound and color... that was 1978 or 79.
CWS
)!Actually, I was a "Data Maintenance Clerk" back in 1965 at Security Mutual Life Insurance company in Binghamton, NY. On the 7th floor was the data processing center and they had a 1401 system. It wasn't all dressed up like the pictures shown in the link, with our beast being basically two-tone gray. (IBM, in neighboring Endicott started producing certain dress color schemes (IBM blue, red, and creme; IIRC...I think I still have a can of the red somewhere here) in 1964 or so). BTW, the 1401 was considered a second-generation computer as it was mostly transistorized.
If you look at picture 2, that's a 1402 card processor on the left and right behind the women is the 1401. On the extreme right, is the 1403 chain printer. We had the 1403N1 which was the highspeed version, with a hydrolically operated acoustic hood. The "chain printer" actually printed an entire line with one stroke (unlike today's printers which print one character at a time moving back and forth to complete a line).
Also pictured in Image 2 are four tape drive systems. Much more modern than the card-based system that our 1401 handeled. As a matter of fact, our entire system was card based (80-column punch cards). My job was to handle address changes which we'd receive during the month. Boring job as I'd spend just about all day at a keypunch machine.
But, one week out of the month I'd go through just about every machine in the center, processing cards for the monthly billing. By Friday I'd have collated, sorted, and handled cards in a number of ways, getting them ready to process. You'd then put a "program stack" in front of your "load" and put them in the hopper on the left end of the 1402. Setting up the 1402 (like the collating processor) and the 1401 required me to set up the "switches and knobs" from an instruction book that was provided by the dept. programmer (in other words, I just followed procedures and didn't have much of a clue beyond that).
The 026 Keypunch machine and the collator that is shown pre-dates 1965/6. We were using 029 keypunch machines by that time. What is not well known, is that after the operator punches an card, the data list/form and the newly punched cards have to go to a second person who then inserts the deck into a "verifier" and then key in all the data the second time. Though they pretty much looked the same, the 059 Verifier "read" the holes in the previously punched card and if all the keystrokes were the same, if placed a "verification notch" in the edgd of the card. This was the system way of proof reading the work.
I remember when I was first introduced to the dataprocessing dept., my manager pointed at a chest freezer-size unit sitting in back of the 1401 and telling me it was a 4 kilobyte memory addition.... which gave us the largest operating system in the county. Believe it or not, over in Endicott, IBM was still using their first generation vacuum tube relay system to handle payroll. It required a couple of full-time technicians to keep it running.
I didn't see it in the linked article, and I don't really recall (for sure, anyway) how much "memory" the 1401 had... but I seem to recall that with the extra 4 K module, we had a total of around 12 or 16 kilobytes (not Mega or Giga) of core memory. By contrast, our first home computer was an Atari 800 with 48 kilobytes, 4-channel sound and color... that was 1978 or 79.
CWS
:
LCHIEN
Loring in Katy, TX USA
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