1963 Rare IBM Film: "The Big Switch" and 1410 Data Processing System, Computer Network Automation

[@SlyPearTree]

I was born in 1963 and I love this channel. I never imagined that there was once a job involving manually sorting/distributing paper tape although the need for it seems obvious now that I know about it. Every single task a computer does, no matter how mundane, once was done by people. Even "computer" used to be a job, not a machine.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Yes, quite surprising! It was fascinating to see the operators tear the paper tapes by hand and use them to re-transmit messages. Seems so primitive for the times. Great observations! Thanks! ~VK

[@KameraShy]

I remember paper tape but never knew is was used in such a creative way.

[@laurentelens4697]

Looking at the past, we see the future. (wondering how many programming langages I did study are useless now...)

[@TheShawna1]

@@KameraShy paper tape goes back to 1850s morse code readers this carried on until this movie that’s all that tape represents Morse characters converted to 1s and 0s digital tones.

[@mauricewalshe8339]

The Pentagon used a lot of manual printed messages form able traffic until the early 90's

[@elisec.8388]

So my father is the reason this film was unearthed...he is the guy who appears at 3:22 and beyond. He is 90 now and was wondering whatever happened to that movie, so he contacted IBM archives, and they found it and posted it!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Elise, thanks very much for your kind worlds. Very glad this film brought back some good memories. It is an excellent look back at the past, and the dedicated folks who make these systems work! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@jix177]

Well done, glad he did. It's a fascinating movie. Thanks.

[@jaygee1103]

Thank him from all of us

[@sergeciregna]

My dear Elise, thank you. You were only 4 at the time and I never imagined then I would be part of a movie. Life can be funny, no?

[@PerfectInterview]

Yes, in the 50’s many bright young women with math degrees and no job prospects were hired to work as “computers” when the hydrogen bomb was being developed. This work involved extremely complex calculations that could not be solved by any one person, so they broke the problems down into smaller pieces and assigned them to the teams of female human computers. The managers of course were all men.

[@bryanguzik]

Funny skynet vibe: 'Then on April 23,1963 it became operational & assumed full control of the network'.

[@mm-hl7gh]

.. 90 milliseconds later it became self aware and declared war against humans. ;)

[@realcourte]

Unplug the mainframe system... No movie! :)

[@Skyprince27]

@@mm-hl7gh No one’s been able to get the pod bay doors open ever since.

[@mikmop]

HAL 9000: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it Dave. Bowman: Stop jerking me around and open the damn pod bay doors, HAL. Or else I'll shove this punch tape right up your kazoo.

[@Bialy_1]

Your famili name also would be perfect for that vibe as "guzik"="button" in Polish. heh

[@JohnMichaelson]

The late 50's/early 60's period to me is the most fascinating, and this film shows why. Despite the automation getting underway there was still SO MUCH manual work involved. All those people in that little space tearing strips of paper to re-feed! I can hardly imagine a more tedious job.

[@mariuszmariusz7788]

The film shows engagement, respect for work and development. Today, I think the world is no longer developing(or develops in tempo 1/10 of 60,s) are many people stupider than in the Middle Ages .. Today people are just trying to show off their colorful feathers, huge time and life wasting, the social media era... where a scientific authority is a celebrities, not a scientist whose passion is a given field etc Regards, m

[@majkus]

@@mariuszmariusz7788 And, in 1961, Newton Minow, the new chair of the FCC, famously described television as a 'vast wasteland', saying that when television is good, nothing is better, but when television is bad, nothing is worse. Or, as Theodore Sturgeon put it even more succinctly, "Ninety percent of _everything_ is crud!"

[@transitengineer]

In my 60's now but a toddler when this was filmed. As an African American with a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering, I noticed the creators of the messages were mostly Men and the persons typing the messages were primarily Women. Also, when watching all the men tearing strips of paper to re-feed into other machines it was nice to see one African American male (smile...smile).

[@becconvideo]

@@transitengineer but their sons and daughters studied computer sciences and became programmers, business analysts - some of them founded companies :-)

[@osvaldocristo]

I could see one of the last of those computers at working. It was a model manufactured on the beginning of 1970, one of the last of the series. It was working in one lab in the university I was a graduate student on 1980 here in Brazil. It was deactivated a little bit afterwards. Thanks to bring me a such memories!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Osvaldo, thank you for you comments! ... I am very glad you enjoyed this look back at the past. ~ Charles, CHAP

[@TheMohawkNinja]

As somebody who works in IT, it's crazy to see the similarities to the modern TCP/IP protocol. They reference things like unicast, multicast, and broadcast ("single address", "multiple address", and "broadcast"), and the issues of having to route both on a LAN (the same branch office) and a WAN (the whole country-wide network), and even having support for what we would now call a "distribution list" in email (the "distribution" they refer to). Also, just think of the speed increases that have happened. They mention the message traveling through the network over a span of MINUTES, whereas nowadays that happens in MILLISECONDS! That's four orders of magnitude!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Benjamin, good points! ~ VK

[@programaths]

If you look at emails, they could take DAYS to travel from nodes to nodes and possibly lost if a node didn't forward. TCP really spoiled us :-D

[@thesteelrodent1796]

@@programaths it can still sometimes take days, or at least hours, to send email across the atlantic if there's a lot of traffic going through the cables. Something many automated services aren't able to compensate for when they insist on doing things like verification through email. The problem typically isn't the cables, but oversaturation of the network beyond the relay stations on the other side

[@James_Knott]

Actually, it was quite different. Back then, entire messages were switched, not packets as is done with TCP/IP. One message would fully occupy the line, until it was completed. Also, there wasn't much in the way of error checking, so a message could be received with errors in it. BTW, I worked for a telecom company for almost 23 years, starting in 1972 and most of the business was message switching. I worked on this sort of thing every day.

[@arrowrod]

My machines. I was a customer engineer at IBM starting in 1967. The 1401 and it's input output devices were still being used. I was trained on the System 360 model 30. I worked on everything, mostly not trained on a lot of devices, but still fixed them. Electrons flow from negative to positive.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Very cool. 1967, a pretty good year for IBM too. ~ Thanks for sharing.

[@ernestgalvan9037]

In 1969, I had the opportunity to work at a Computer Lab at the University where my Dad started teaching. They had an IBM 1130 System with integrated Selectric I/O and hard drive, 1401 Printer, card read/punch, card punches, card sorters, etc. They had an entire large closet with ALL the manuals. Circuits, theory, maintenance, programming (machine language, assembler, FORTRAN IV, RPG, ECAP) EVERYTHING. 8K Core Memory, 500K hard drive platters. I taught myself to run, maintain and program all the machines. I was 15, and in heaven. Flashing lights and switches everywhere, whir of electric motors, clikity-clack of relays, solenoids and cams…

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Ernest, sounds like an amazing tech career, and you started very young! That is the best way to enter a field like that. Thanks for sharing! (I need to look up 'ECAP", never heard of that one.) ~ Victor, CHAP

[@wavingfree1]

Started 1960 on the IBM 709, great memories

[@mr.h.4501]

Pretty awesome video... I've spent my entire working career with information systems and their networks going back from the 90's. I recall in those days the older IBM mainframes that were still being used by many large companies and telcos dating back from the 70's and 80's.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi MR. H., very glad you enjoyed the "Big Switch" IBM film. It sounds like you have a good bit of IT experience spanning many years. Hope you can check out our other IBM related videos, including those on the "System/360" and "System/370" mainframes and others. Thanks for your feedback too! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@edinetgrunhed6000]

Sometimes old video teaches subject straight to the point

[@felixmeyer1972]

I entered to IBM in the years 1964, as a customer engineer. I started with the IBM 1410, a very large and fast . Then I learnd to program, in the assembler language.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Felix, very cool. A great system. 1964 is quite a while ago.... I bet you have lived through some amazing changes. Thanks for your visiting our channel. We have several decent 1410 related videos here as well. ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@danielweir5867]

Ahhh ... punch cards. I last used them in 1978 for FORTRAN programs on Perkin-Elmer Interdata 8 / 32 minicomputers. What memories!

[@michaelinhouston9086]

Punch cards 👍 I had 8 hours of FORTRAN IV programming in college in addition to my 3 hours of COBOL - I spent many hours on the keypunch machines. Our programs were run on a UNIVAC 9600(?).

[@markanderson8066]

I used punch cards as a college freshman in 75 and around 80 used a P-E Interdata.

[@petermainwaringsx]

A really enjoyable, historical and instructive video. Thanks for posting.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Peter, thanks very much. Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks to IBM Archives for letting us share it here. It is a rare gem! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@ronfarmery]

Very nice to watch! I started working on an IBM 360/20 in September 1967, then moved to a 360/30 and 360/40 in May 1968. After a while, I started using mainframes from Siemens, Bull/GE, Burroughs, etc. In 1972, I switched to mini computer systems, Datapoint being the first one. Wrote my own first data communications program way back in 1974 so this video is certainly something I liked watching. Of course, moved to the PC world as soon as IBM released the first PC. Wrote a few dozen data communications programs, enhanced emulators I call them; also wrote half a dozen data communications servers on various platforms. The world has definitely changed a lot since my first communications attempt at 1,200 baud in 1974 but, even at that speed, it did work, just like the paper tapes were sent, even at much lower speeds! During all these years, I loved all the new stuff that showed up and/or that I created for various projects. I did my best to try and pass my knowledge to others, about 3,500 of them, but kept on programming and learning while teaching. We live in interesting times, even when things are difficult for many. Never give up.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Ron, thank you very much for sharing some of your past experiences! Quite fascinating. It sounds like you have lots of experience and quite a variety from IBM to Siemens, Bull, GE, etc. I bet you have seen many, many changes over the years. Thanks again and glad you found the video interesting! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@James_Knott]

I used to work on a system, built around a Datapoint 2200, that was used to keep track of railway freight cars.

[@gwgux]

Interesting, I grew up hearing stories about that stuff. I'll never have the nostalgia the people who where there have for it, but I do have fond memories of hearing the stories about them. Thanks for the visual aid I never had for these systems!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

You are very welcome! ~ VK

[@rty1955]

Omg i feel old. I forst worked on 407 unit record machines and plugboard wiring. Then I went onto a 1401, 360/30, 370/135, 4331, 4341, 4381, S-390 I wrote in assembler on all those machines and got thwm to do things IBM said could not be done. I still have green & yellow cards (if anyone still remember those) still have my bible (principles of ops manual) I even wrote micro code for the 360 machine. They called is ROS or Read Only Storage. It was a plastic 80 Col card with silver strips on them that was sandwiched between air bags on the left side of the machine. Later they used 8" floppies on the 370 and 4300 machines. The 2401 tapes drives were the fastest I ever saw in rewind too! And to watch a tape sort was amazing! After it read in all the data from tapes. It would print out on the printer how many passes of the data had to be made before final output. I used to write E15 & E35 sort exits in assembler haha

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Roy, it sounds like you have an excellent background in these early machines! Thanks for your descriptions of some of the components too. The super-fast 2401 tape rewind was certainly impressive. I am glad you found our channel. If you haven' seen them yet, we also have videos on the System 360 and System 370, with original footage from IBM technicians. Thank you again for sharing your experiences. Keep well! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@rty1955]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject haha I remember an operator dropped a reel of tape and broke of a piece of the reel. I told him he needs to wind it on another reel. He continued to mount the tape at the End of Volume, the heads came up, tape pulled out of the vacuum columns then the fun began! About 1/4 of the way into the rewind, the reel exploded and pieces of plastic embeded itself into one of the capstans. Drive down! He should have used the Data Interfile Transfer & Test Operation or DITTO - remember?) to copy the reel first!! I think I still have a printer channel tape punch someplace!!

[@wavingfree1]

Assembler on the thermionic valve 709, then on transistorised 7094,then 360 370s there always seemed to be a need despite Fortran, COBOL then pl1. Still find of assembler...

[@rty1955]

@@wavingfree1 doesnt matter what device was used as a switch. If its a logic device it can be used in a computer. Tubes were originally designed as amplifiers, not for logic circuits, as they were mostly used in thier linear range for amplification.

[@wavingfree1]

@@rty1955 the IBM 709 was a digital computer, the valves were mainly gates or and circuits, digital devices

[@mrbrent62]

I was born in ‘62. I worked in places which used technology like this. Now I help manage my companies exchange server which does the same thing. “Email”. Distribution lists, shared mailboxes etc.

[@lawrencemanning]

It's because the fundamental problem to be solved is the same: Exchange server, IBM system from the 60s, physical post, carrier pigeon. No doubt when interstellar communications are invented it will run beneath these same high level concepts. About the only thing this IBM system likely lacked is spam!

[@VictorianMaid99]

I hate to say it in the 1970's I was learning to key punch on that same system. I feel so old !

[@PatThePerson]

The way they described it sounds similar to TCP/IP packets with the machine basically being a switch and a modem

[@infinitecanadian]

This is probably the ancestor of that technology.

[@Hiphopasaurus]

It's actually a lot like Echomail (Fidonet, etc), in terms of it's hub and spoke, store and forward architecture. Though amazing how much technology (and expense) it clearly took to accomplish in the early 60's what hobbiests did in the early 80's with just home computers!

[@stuffnva]

It sounds like a precursor to X.25 packet switching. Back in those days transmission errors were common, so there was need for error detection.

[@gorillaau]

This is still circuit switching (a line is dedicated to a given message and only one message sent at a time). What this system changed was that the routing between lines was automated and the idle time was reduced. Accept the messages from a line as fast as you can into a buffer, and send when the line becomes free. Rethinking it, if a message was broken up into smaller chunks, each with the sender and destination details and a packet sequence number, then it could be packet switching.

[@dalecomer5951]

It's message switching. They had so-called "nailed" connections between each office and the message switch.

[@BsktImp]

00:48 I wonder if ever, when asked by his son or daughter "What did you do at work today, Daddy?", a clerk in these times replied "I stamped 7,000 pieces of paper."...

[@James_Knott]

At one time messages were handled entirely by hand and sent via Morse code!

[@felipepalmacastro]

Thank you very much for your hard work and sharing this. I'm grateful.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi F PC, thanks very much for the kind words! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@josephgaviota]

Agree; I enjoy these, too. ❣

[@infinitecanadian]

So fascinating how computers didn't have monitors, and had tape drives the size of a refrigerator.

[@josephgaviota]

The first system I worked with was a PDP-8i ... no monitors ... only paper tape in, paper tape out. (I think it was 8i, maybe 8e, it was 1975, so I'm not perfectly sure)

[@aydenlokey3641]

Yeah, they hadn't figured out yet how to get everything on a screen, so your computer would have status lights, and everything was outputted on the printer. As for the tape drives, there were smaller ones, but they read tapes slower, the refrigerator sized ones used vacuum columns to actually read tapes incredibly quick without snapping them from tension!

[@James_Knott]

In May 1972, I started working for a telecom company as a technician. Back then, most of the business was message switching, either private networks or Telex, though we also handled telegrams. Initially, I worked on the subscriber equipment, that is Teletypes, etc. which would be in customer offices. Later on, I was a computer tech, working on the computers that did the switching. So, I could certainly relate to this video.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi James, it sounds like your tech career predates mine : ) Lots of tech changes during the 70's, 80's for sure. It is interesting how the IT worlds of telecommunications and computing became so importantly linked from the very beginnings. Even more so today and on such a grand scale! Thanks very much for your sharing, and glad you related to this video! ~ Victor

[@dalecomer5951]

What threw me was converting the "telegraph code" to BCD. The first proposed ASCII standard (7-bit) was published in 1963.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Dale, interesting. Do you think they were referring to ASCII?

[@dalecomer5951]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject The original 7-bit ASCII is a standardization of the telegraph code. I"m guessing that there was some variation in the symbol sets used by different telegraph companies so standardization was necessary for interoperability. The organization which became ANSI was working on it at the same time that IBM was building the system shown in the film. Not sure which was the first IBM system to support ASCII but the System/360 did and it was announced in 1964 the year after the film was released. So the IBM engineers would have been designing ASCII support into the 360 while others were building the message system based on the 1410 which did not support it.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Dale, thanks very much. I appreciate the additional information! ~ VK

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Great info, thanks. "Reading diagnostic dumps" brings up the mental image of a top notch programmer with a cup of strong coffee and LOTS of patience! : ) ~ VK

[@jkakari]

I mentally translated that line as "...to the BCD that _IBM_ computers use(d)."

[@majkus]

Those of us who came to computing just a bit later than this think of Teletype® consoles with paper tape as computer I/O devices, with the paper tape primarily used to store and input programs (e.g., in BASIC). This is a reminder that Teletypes and paper tapes were general telecommunication devices before that (and so there are things in ASCII like Ctrl-D for 'End Of Transmission' that were later adapted to computer use).

[@dalecomer5951]

And it was natural to connect digital processors into the teletype networks to speed up message processing as shown in the film. It also meant a lot of legacy baggage such as RS-232 ports on the digital units having to support + and - 25 vdc signalling.

[@BobLucore]

I used to play around on an IBM 1440, a relative of the model 1410 in this film. I remember writing code on those paper sheets with little boxes, punching the cards, putting them in the card reader, waiting, and then seeing the output on the printer. We used an assembly language called Autocoder. The computer was large, like the one in this film. I think it had a whopping 12K of RAM.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Bob, thank your comments on the "Big Switch" film! Sounds like you have some hands-on experienc with the 1400 series. "Autocoder" was well known back in the day (I believe). Glad you found our channel. There is also a video on the IBM 1440 uploaded here, if you are interested. Thanks again! kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJqrhYB4oq2ekM0 ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@Vincegpz500]

"Hello. IT helpdesk." "My 1410 isn't working." "I'll log that and someone will get back to you totally misunderstanding the reason for the original call because I didn't understand enough to correctly transcribe. In the meantime - Have you turned it off and back on again?"

[@joshuapk9808]

As old as this is, I'm fairly certain that it still ran better than any installation of Lotus Notes... ;)

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Yes, considerably!

[@videosuperhighway7655]

Wow a router with people inside doing the routing by hand. Thats crazy.

[@James_Knott]

Take a look inside a modern router. They're still there, only smaller! 🙂

[@TesterAnimal1]

I had to deal with paper tape and punched cards on an old ICL in the UK in the 80s. I remember writing COBOL source code on coding sheets to be typed in by somebody else, then fed to the compiler and a day later we’d get syntax errors. How did we ever get anything working? Front end developer now. JavaScript is a little different to COBOL!

[@TheFiscallySound]

I key punched my own COBOL and ALC programs and ran the card decks through the card reader to compile the programs and ultimately test the programs.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

GreyWolfClimber, "ICL" = "International Computers Limited" ?

[@transitengineer]

Yes, me too at college the first computer programs that, I ever wrote were on punch cards. Which, of course had to be feed manually into the mainframe computer system's card reader. I was so glad when later these were replaced with monitor screen terminals with keyboards (smile...smile).

[@becconvideo]

People were much more meticolous than today. Today we got used to try and error - so badly that this spead out to subjects where one cannot afford to act like that. Collateral damage included :-)

[@martinusher1]

The little bit of programming we saw used assembler and coding sheets. They're using punch cards for program entry and job control, the paper tape's just messages. I missed out on most of this era -- and I don't regret it!

[@jonmcadams5401]

Interesting to compare then and now and speculate about the future. In the 1980s I submitted a request to the National Science Foundation for funding to support my PhD research on "The Impact of Home Computers on Patterns of Family Life". My funding request was denied with this comment from a reviewer "My perplexity then derives from the fact that there may be possibly interesting consequences from computer home use, but that it could be of rather minor importance in the scheme of things". I still have the letter. I worked for AT&T before it was broken up, and then in IT for various organizations for about 30 years. It's not well known but while I was at AT&T they turned down a proposal to deliver computer games using their Long Distance Network.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Jon, that is a fascinating story about your proposal to National Science Foundation. It would have made a great study. They missed a good opportunity to explore the impact of home computers on daily life. Looking back now, no one would argue that they have influenced almost every part of life, from employment to romance. Especially since today's hand-held computers (phones) let people play games wherever they are. Thanks for sharing your experience with ATT too! ~ Victor, at CHAP

[@ralphe9668]

My idea for today is this type of study but the computer can not destroy itself right. It's alive. As with many things the future generations will see the effects .... 🙂

[@jonmcadams5401]

@@ralphe9668 Yes, every emerging communication technology (the printing press, telegraph, radio, television, computers) has changed individuals, group behaviors, and societies. There are possible combinations of robotics, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence that could have similar major impacts.

[@christopherrippel2463]

Great film. I was 3-years old at that time.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Christopher, thanks for the feedback. Glad you enjoyed it. Hope you will check out our other vintage tech films too.~ C.Hunter, CHAP

[@WinrichNaujoks]

These "computers" sound quite promising. I wonder if they'll ever become a thing.

[@petermainwaringsx]

Only when the required uniform becomes denim and T-shirts.

[@renakunisaki]

Imagine how much paper they'd consume!

[@bobstadelmayer8402]

I remember seeing a quote where someone said there would only be about 5 computers in the world. The person was an IBM executive. I've often wondered if this guy ever lasted with IBM? 😁

[@petermainwaringsx]

@@bobstadelmayer8402 I remember in an retrospective episode of The Simpsons someone saying only the five richest men in the world would own one.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

".. there is only a worldwide market for 5 computers" is a paraphrased quote often attributed to Thomas Watson, Jr., in early 1950's, but probably taken out of context. Between 1959 and 1970, IBM sold over 12,000 IBM 1401 computers, so they quickly learned the economic value of selling theses machines. : ) CHAP

[@astral857]

In 1971 I was a 6yo kid spending summer days at my father's workplace - the Open University in UK. They had an IBM 1410 system, just like this one. I remember playing a game of tic-tac-toe against the computer on the teletype terminals, and making artwork out of used papertape and punched cards.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Astral Clouds, sounds like interesting memories. Who won the Tic-tac-toe game? ~ Victor

[@hilarioph]

Right now IBM was now a personal computer service including online

[@RobHoffman83]

Email before email. When I started using the system back in 1984, we had email. Back then the systems connected a couple of times a day to exchange mail. There was no internet (at least for us) then.

[@b43xoit]

Packet-switched networking! The music!

[@majkus]

Message-switched, not packet switched. The messages were indivisible and basically had only one route to get from the source to destination, if the tree-structured map is accurate. But the idea of putting routing information as metadata with the messages (along with timestamping and the like) is definitely part of what the ARPANET and later Internet implemented later.

[@b43xoit]

@@majkus Store and forward!

[@JeffDeWitt]

I think the disk storage device was a RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control). Held about 2MB...

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Jeff, you got it! ~ CHAP

[@JeffDeWitt]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject I used to work for IBM and the first thing I worked on was a 90's era machine with the same name, and it got me curious. The IBM website used to have a short video on the history of those machines, one of the clips was a guy in a lab coat pouring a beaker of magnetic material on a spinning disk showing how the disks in the RAMAC were made. Needless to say disk technology has come a LONG way since then!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Jeff, I think we have that video or one similar uploaded here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bafLi31pnLlgd6s the scene you mention is around the 4:25 minute mark. Fascinating. Thanks for sharing some of your background! ~ VK, CHAP

[@JeffDeWitt]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject That's not quite it. The clip I recall was in black and white, and the technician was actually holding the beaker of magnetic material in his hand while pouring it onto the spinning disk. The scene you point out looks like an advanced version of the same process.

[@albertli7717]

I am 1963 too! Cheers.

[@LionheartNh]

Would love to go back and visit this decade...still waiting on a Delorean with an optional flux capacitor though.

[@kaceyhowell6570]

And take something really powerful like the latest Dell XPS laptop with you to show them.

[@ChatGPT1111]

Just go to Harbor Freight and pick up a Mr. Fusion. That thing can use Dr. Pepper and even the can!

[@TheRedbeardster]

Excellent video, thank you very much!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

You are very welcome. Thanks for the kind words.

[@markanderson8066]

Minor correction. The paper tapes are 5 level Baudot code. The machines are teletype not telegraphs. Paper tape was used for telegraphs but earlier and not 5 level. Wonderful movie!

[@James_Knott]

Actually, the circuits were still called telegraph. I used to work for a telecom company, starting in 1972. Even then, it was still known as Canadian National Telegraphs (yeah, part of the railway) and was in the middle of being rebranded as CN Telecommunications. Teletype is the brand name of a company, Teletype Corp., that made teleprinters and punch tape equipment. I started out in the business sitting at a work bench all day overhauling them.

[@newtechtv9518]

Thank you so much sir very informative

[@DerrickMims]

So if I understand this, the network would be something like a chain of bank branches with the headquarters in Los Angeles? The control unit in Los Angeles manages all of the communications to the other branches. So if one were wanting to disrupt such communication, for any number of nefarious reasons, it would simply be a matter of destroying or damaging or disconnecting the control unit at the main office? Even though all the rest of the branches from Phoenix to Boston are still connected, they can’t talk to each other electronically?

[@arcadesunday4592]

Quite fascinating, considering how far we've come from then till now.

[@SubTroppo]

The drone like uniformity of the IBM staff is something that I've read about but not seen. I wonder what the "torn tape" guys did after it was computerized.

[@PatThePerson]

They would have to maintain the more efficient system which did far more work than they did manually. Instead of hire more the same people can do more for less

[@squirlmy]

@Jim Allen that would have been the textile workers in England, who fought back as "Luddites". A lot of them went from "middle-class" to being terrorists, or poverty and petty crime. As far as the people in the video, as long as they were white males, they mostly did alright. A fair number had veteran's benefits (from WW II.) And there were still lots of manufacturing jobs, houses were like $1000. It's hard to imagine.

[@squirlmy]

@Jim Allen I say automation is a bad thing. In the 40s some scientist invented a "self cleaning fabric" for clothing, and he was attacked by mobs and got death threats because everyone knew people, especially women, whose work was doing laundry. It's hard to imagine, but capitalism was tempered by the idea that we could create somewhat meaningless jobs to provide honest work. Inefficiencies were well-tolerated. Now it's dog-eat-dog and we accept this as okay, as if not getting work and ending up on the street is bad luck for them and that we can't do anything to change it.

[@anicecupoftea8303]

@@squirlmy I think you’re getting mixed up with the fifties film “The Man in the White Suit”.

[@SenileOtaku]

@Jim Allen "...What did the buggy whip makers do when cars came along?" Simple, they just started selling to the S&M market...

[@newmankidman5763]

I wish I could time travel just to go back in time and thank the pioneers of technology by showing them what their inventions led to/would lead to. I would do so on their last day alive, just so they would not have the opportunity to use my information to alter the future, and my timeline would remain intact. I would show them a laptop, a smart phone, a big thin screen, a scanner printer, and many other inventions such as cars and planes through a video on the laptop.

[@4wheelwarrior]

Brilliant! What a gem, Thank You. IMO this is 1000x cooler than email lol

[@RetroJack]

I love how at 9:11 he took a moment to see that nothing jammed!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Retro Jack, good observation. When tape or card machines malfunctioned at high speed, one really has a mess on their hands, fast! (But did you ever wear a suite and tie in a data center?) : ) Charles, CHAP

[@tomgooch1422]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Ha! There were numerous tells of intermittent equipment problems by the operators, once you'd learned what to watch for. My favorite examples: Operator standing in front of a tape drive after hitting the 'Load' and 'Start' buttons, instead of immediately walking away, meant they were seeing enough load failures to justify the wait. Operators themselves were often oblivious to this behavior. Operator standing in front of the Reject pocket on a 1419 check sorter, after taking their foot off the Stop treadle, instead of walking away. This meant they'd seen enough slow pocket restores spewing checks in the air, at the rate of 500 checks per minute, to justify waiting. Again, operator(s) were usually oblivious to their anticipatory actions.

[@RetroJack]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Nope, but I'd be very leery of wearing a tie around high-speed machinery anyway! :D

[@PauloCesarZorzi]

good job. thank you very much.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for the feedback. This is quite a rare film, and lucky to be able to share it here. ~ Victor, CHAP

[@michaelkhalsa]

Yep, all of that, tape, punch cards, transistor boards and early chips contains just 8 logic gates... Sometimes for fun, we would program how the head would read bits on a large 4kb platter hard drive ( about a foot in diameter), which you could then pick up on a standard portable radio placed next to the drives, and listen to as a kind of music.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Michael, that is something I have never heard of before! Fascinating! Thanks for this bit of history. ~ Victor, CHAP

[@BlenderRookie]

It's crazy how much changed in 58 years.

[@transitengineer]

True a lot has changes over the years. However, a lot has remained, just about the same from telegraph, to teletype, to E-mail messages, it is all coast -to-coast electronic communication that, is sent and received in a mater of minutes (smile...smile).

[@idahofur]

I wonder if you had to call in a request or (send it to the operator) to say reprint a message or if you have a list of user commands for each teletype? Thus, freezing up the operator at the main center.

[@BobDiaz123]

Interesting how the technology of that day made this possible. I believe that the computers in 1963 were using transistors rather that the unreliable vacuum tubes. This meant that down time was minimal. I'm not sure what the BAUD rate for TTY was back then, but likely it was 110 or 300 BAUD, a very slow rate. The computers back then weren't very fast, but the data coming in was slow. That gave the computer time to keep up with all the incoming and outgoing data.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Bob, good observations! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@sergeciregna]

No, we were still using tubes, transistors came a bit later.

[@BobDiaz123]

Serge Ciregna In 1954 Bell Labs built the first transistor computer. It was called the TRADIC. The IBM 7070 was IBM's first transistor computer. That came out is 1958. I can't see why 5 years later IBM would take a step backwards and use vacuum tubes.

[@Tigrou7777]

@@BobDiaz123 Agree. Most of the logic circuitry of the IBM 1410 was diodes, resistors and germanium transistors mounted on a PCB (called SMS cards).

[@johnopalko5223]

The most common data rates in use at the time were 45.5 baud, 50.0 baud, 56.9 baud, 74.2 baud, and 100.0 baud. When you hear the iconic sound of a teleprinter in a film or television show, it's usually of a machine running at 45.5 baud, most likely a Teletype Model 15.

[@Bruce-vq7ni]

1963 - A great year to be in the White Shirt making business.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Bruce, That is true! - A strict dress code at times. IBM ARCHIVES has a great series of photos showing the history of the mandated IBM attire. www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/waywewore/waywewore_1.html ~ Charles, CHAP

[@josephgaviota]

Agreeing with CHAP ... the whole white shirt thing was VERY _de régiure_ in IBM world.

[@roycsinclair]

And this was a film about partially transitioning email from mechanical systems to a computer. Email isn't new, it really dates back to the invention of the telegraph.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Roy, exactly! Good point. VK

[@josephgaviota]

I'm telling Jon Postel you said that

[@roycsinclair]

@@josephgaviota Jon invented the protocol behind modern email, email existed in many forms before his contribution. The real question is whether this is the form it will have from now on or if there be some future iteration which replaces it.

[@kevinhoward9593]

1:29 anyone notice that they typing on the page just magically appears without the paper being touched?

[@comeasyouare4545]

I remember when they used to take of a basket of tubes, and replace the tubes. There were thousands of them. Then about a year later they removed all the old computer cabinets, and replaced it with one cabinet about the size of a refrigerator. The age of transistors had arrived.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Very true, IBM Archives pages show the 1410 was announced in September 1960 and stayed as a produce offering by IBM until withdrawn in March 1970. Lots of technical upgrades during that time period! ~ Thanks for your comments! ~ VK, CHAP

[@spacecitysprockets]

Do I want my office computers to look like that? Yes!

[@RickJohnson]

Massively complex system that ultimately lead to what we now recognize as modern email. No SPAM then though!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Rick, good observation! I wonder what "spam" would have even looked like back then? : )

[@josefmazzeo6628]

Back in the 80s I had to write my programs on PUNCH CARDS in college! I saw one IT guy at the time drop a whole box of cards....what a mess!

[@HarryDelien]

That's why you ALWAYS number you card with pencil!

[@jnucci1]

In those days I used a marker to draw a diagonal line across the side of the card deck. If the deck ever got dropped the first step was to reorder the cards to get the line back.

[@matthewfusaro2590]

"The torn tape switching center" In other words, the Internet of 1963.

[@conduit242]

It still works this way actually

[@lawrencemiller3829]

I'd call it an Intranet because only one company had this one network.

[@MariaJette]

This was fascinating-thank you! Question: who composed the music? Were there credits at the end with that info, but just not included here?

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Maria, thanks very much. Unfortunatley, the original 16mm film did not include any credits. We usually post credits when we can obtain them. Maybe that info will surface some day and we can update our film description. Nice music track, through, that's true. ~ Victor

[@paulrazzell9827]

I was born in 1963 and live in UK .

[@newmankidman5763]

The typing revealed that the exact day on which this was filmed was September, 19th, 1963. Namely 09/19/63 as shown at minute 7:48

[@kristian4805]

Where do i order!?

[@alexxx4434]

Just look at that gigantic hard drive!

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Yes, the RAMAC was famous from the late 1950's onward. Massive size, and "fast" for the time. : )

[@gli7utubeo]

Oh look at 3:35 they're writing in Assembly Language.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Yes (BRT, BRA,...) looks like a version of Assembler! Good spotting. (My BAL is very rusty though. How's yours? ) ~ Victor

[@rtwice93555]

The first message received by the employees was a warning that the warranty on their car was about to expire.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

: ) 👍

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

PLEASE JOIN US in Preserving Computer History with a small contribution to our channel. www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LCNS584PPN28E Your contribution greatly helps us continue to bring you educational, historical, vintage computing topics. Thank you! ~ Computer History Archives Project

[@jourwalis-8875]

Was this the forerunner for internet?

[@reinplat]

3:59 Sounds like a line of dialogue from Terminator 2.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

"Judgement Day?" : )

[@renakunisaki]

Just imagine if the modern Internet still used punch tape and had humans feeding packets into huge mechanical machines!

[@becconvideo]

Imagine booking a flight, hotel and rental car some place around the globe with that technology. :-)

[@patthesoundguy]

That's the birth of texting right there

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Perhaps you may be right! At least a very early version of it.

[@patthesoundguy]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject definitely instant messaging in 1963. It's amazing how much all of that changed by the time I got my first computer a Commodore Vic 20 in 1983.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

True. I wonder if any other field as changed so much and so fast in the same period of time. : )

[@jamescole6846]

So this is how email got started. I always wondered. Now you cant go 3 seconds without getting one.

[@Xsses]

This is history of one of the first routers, lol

[@billpeiman8973]

Worked on a system 1401 at Unilever HQ in Rotterdam in 1962.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Bill, thanks very much. I bet those were some interesting times! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@billpeiman8973]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Kind of; I got trained in electronics (Community College level); we actually built a digital computer using vacuum tubes there! After graduating and military service decided to become a system's analyst, so got a job in I.T. at Unilever HQ. Found out that a desk job wasn't for me. Emigrated to Canada in 1966, took Computer Science at University of Waterloo but ended up in electronics more or less the rest of my life. Still am involved with computers.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Bill, sounds like you found a good career to move forward with. Thank you for sharing your background! ~ Victor, CHAP

[@MatthewHill]

And now I've got all this and more in my doorbell...

[@Hopeless_and_Forlorn]

And then some engineer had a thought while watching this movie...text to telegraph code to binary, binary to telegraph code to text. What if we were to get rid of the tape and the telegraph code, and transmit binary signals from computer to computer on existing telephone networks via voice-frequency signal encoding?

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Hopelessand Forlorn, a brilliant engineer for sure! (just imagine if they could have gotten royalties for the architecture!). ~ Thanks! ~ CHAP

[@a0z9]

El telégrafo automático. Eso es lo que han ido intentando una y otra vez.

[@rapscallion3506]

White Plains, New York: the birth of a tech nation.

[@edward6761]

Wow, can you imagine smoking in a datacenter now?

[@TooManyHobbiesJeremy]

Most impressive.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Thanks for the kind words!

[@chrisnewman7281]

This is host to host comms? No switching no routers

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Chris, it would seem so. This is years before IBM's SNA and SDLC. Perhaps one of our viewers has more direct experience with this and can provide more info. ~ Victor

[@roachtoasties]

This looks like the first concept of electronic mail. Little did they know that many decades later, email would be 99% scams and spam. If IBM knew that, they would have dropped the project on day one. :/

[@ericveschi4904]

Emails ancestor ^^

[@CTCTraining1]

I used a manual card punch and teletypewriter with paper tape reader/punch at school ... I learned about ‘hanging chads’ long before they were popular in elections.... and paper tape punching produced free confetti. Don’t get that on your iPhone.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Chris, yes, I bet they had bags of confetti by the end of a work day. Messy too. ~ Victor

[@becconvideo]

If someone of those guys (and few garls) would have imagened that some 40-50 years ahead this technology would have shrunk to fit in the pocket and includes a complete portable TV studio including TV transmission around the world at the fingertips of everyone even of rather poor people... Popular 1960ies science fiction included visions of regular space travel at least to Mars and supersonic jets all over but not this.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Beccon, we are living in the future. Some days it feels like that, some days not. Thanks for your great observations and comments! ~ VK, CHAP

[@uploadJ]

Remember Dick Tracy's two-way wrist TV? Yes - that ...

[@GaryMarriott]

Looking at the location denoted with a star, can you say Single Point Of Failure! Now we see why the ARPANET was such a revolution

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Guy, I am looking for the "star" you mention. What time index are you looking at? Thanks. VK

[@GaryMarriott]

@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject 4:37-5:02

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

I see, thanks! VK

[@scottsullivan234]

0:56 The drone collective. Borg.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

Hi Scott, yes... and a strict dress code! Thanks, good observation! I bet they assimilated some of their competitors... ~ Charles, CHAP

[@louwrentius]

My wrist watch literally has more computing power then was available in 1963 globally 🤯

[@sergeciregna]

Much more, indeed

[@frankowalker4662]

4:00 and everyone was out of a job. :)

[@crazyedo9979]

You never get an electric light bulb by inventing better and better candles.

[@JeffDeWitt]

I don't think so, as I recall IBM was quite proud of never laying anyone off. That changed sometime in the 80's (I think).

[@artmaknev3738]

I heard stories that IBM was so corporate that some people got fired for wearing wrong socks, or a shirt had couple of wrinkles!

[@James_Knott]

It wasn't that way when I was there in the late 90s.

[@androidphone6972]

Life before Ai and machine learning, so cool

[@josefmazzeo6628]

@0:57 Today one person can do the work of all of them, soon to be replaced by AI 😂

[@ralphe9668]

A decentralized system he said ✌️

[@GH-oi2jf]

You could call it “e-mail.”

[@vit.c.195]

Actually nothing change... except size. :P

[@renakunisaki]

Much less paper and human interaction involved now.

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

True : ) ~ VK

[@josephgaviota]

How many MILES of paper tape I've handled ... I told some of my employees (in the '90s) about paper tape, and they didn't believe it existed. No, REALLY, it _did_ exist. Burpee punch, anyone?

[@James_Knott]

I used to work on those punches in the Toronto Stock Exchange. I've also handled a lot of paper tape, ticker tape and punched cards back then.

[@becconvideo]

Seeing all those people doing manual work which that machines replaces many - even intelligent folks - predicted a grim future with mass unemployment an decay. Nothing of that happened

[@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject]

I guess we are all doing better than expected! : ) VK

[@frankwalder3608]

That is a lot of large and expensive equipment just to send a text message!

[@majkus]

But not to send a LOT of text messages! You might as well say that the switchboard and crossbars used at the time were a lot of work just to let a couple of people talk on the phone.

[@dalecomer5951]

It was for the entire company.