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To: ShadowAce

The 402 pictured was an “accounting machine,” taking a stack of punched cards, doing some simple totalizing math, and printing out journals and statements.

It was “programmed” by a panel with hundreds of jack holes into which you plugged up to a couple hundred patch wires to do the appropriate column arrangements and totalizer functions. The panels were on frames which were removable, so you could have a shelf of them ready for whichever run you needed to make.

The 402 was little sister to the 407, which I helped to maintain on a couple of occasions (in 1963, mind you).

It’s a wonder they can still maintain that stuff. An IBM field office held a very large stock of exotic bits and pieces for these monsters back in the day, but that’s all long gone by now.


23 posted on 02/20/2012 9:09:14 AM PST by Erasmus (Able was I ere I saw this crappy little island.)
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To: Erasmus
I took a "Data Processing" class while in high school. We had around 6 key punch machines, a collator, sorter, and the 402 accounting. The teacher bugged the administration to get a computer because the other equipment was so "antiquated".

The next year we had gotten a Honeywell mini-computer that was still programmed with data cards. We had problems with the cards swelling up due to humidity, and the computer was considered stae-of-the-art, it allowed us to program in FORTRAN and COBOL.

27 posted on 02/20/2012 9:33:53 AM PST by BerryDingle (I know how to deal with communists, I still wear their scars on my back from Hollywood-Ronald Reagan)
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