[cctalk] Re: IBM Punched Card Equipment

In the interest of not cluttering everyone's inbox, I'm going to try to respond to everyone all at once. This may fail spectacularly. :) Van Snyder wrote: Good suggestion. I hadn't thought to ask him, but he would be a good one to talk to. Wayne S wrote: That is where I found some of the information I was able to find on the Type 513, but as pointed out below, I did overlook the training manual. I tend to steer away from the real-time conversational tools, but this might be a good enough reason to bite the bullet on it. David Wade wrote: I can't remember where I found this, but the best photograph of these units that I've seen is: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/eniac/brl-card.jpg I've wondered that as well. The wording in the IBM letter that I found reads: "Some two or three months ago, Colonel P.N. Gillon called on Mr. Thomas J. Watson, President of International Business Machines Corporation, with a request that we furnish certain of our standard units for use with a special machine for calculating purposes now being built. ... "We have worked out the details of the interconnection of our machines with the remainder of the apparatus and are ready to start construction of the units at our factory. In order to start construction on any of our machines, an order and WPB approval is required. "It is suggested that a new contract be entered into for two items: 1 - Card Reading Unit (Type 512A) 1 - Gang Summary Punch (Type 518)" That would be very consistent with them being special units, probably variations on standard products. If anyone is interested in seeing the letter itself, here's a scan from microfilm: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/eniac/letters/ibm-devs.pdf I hadn't looked that the training manual there. My bad. The one on that page labeled Card Reproducing Punch looks a lot like the one that I'm pretty sure is the punch in the ENIAC pictures. Bill Degnan wrote: I'm inclined to think we have enough informed opinions to say that unless something else comes to the fore, the best conclusion is that they were indeed special units. The only reference I've seen to the 518 outside this letter is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IBM_products and that lists as reference a book that doesn't appear to be on archive.org. Good idea. Most of my research has been at the UPenn archives, and they do have some overlap with the Hagley, but I haven't been to Hagley yet and should visit. As a bit of background, some years ago the Hagley, the UPenn archives, and the Charles Babbage institute all realized that among them, they had almost all of the exhibits from the patent trial. So they got a grant to gather them all together and have them microfilmed. Each of the institutions got back their originals and full sets of the microfilm. I've actually been through it (all 210 rolls) and have capture several GB of scans. I'm still processing them an making them available, with priority on the engineering drawings. If you're interested in taking a look at the drawings, here's a link to the ones I've posted so far: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/eniac/drawings/ And anyone who will be at VCFMW next weekend is welcome to stop by my table and see my ENIAC simulaton if you're interested. Thanks for all the tips, BLS