Illustrations from Two Rare Computer Pamphlets (1945 and 1948)

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

This is a repost from my books-for-sale pages, basically catalog entries (minus the sales stuff) for two very seldom seen works on early (and famous) IBM machines, the ASSC (1945) and the SSEC 

With a Giant Fold-out Photo Illustration of the Mark I (the ASSC) Computer, 1945

IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Published by International Business Machines Corporation, 1945. 11”x 8.5”, 6pp. Illustrated with a massive (30” x 11”) folding photographic plate of the computer which seems to be the first image of the full length of the machine. (An earlier but less inclusive report appears in Popular Mechanics in 1944 (in an unusually-titled article, “Robot Solves Problems”) and though it does have a photo of the computer only shows a small piece of it. This photo is just fantastic, and it would seem to be the first full frontal image of the great computer. It is also one of the most impressive computer photos I've ever seen of any of the early machines. 

This pamphlet tells the story of the ASCC starting with the establishment of the Columbia University Statistics Bureau in 1928 (for adapting IBM machines for Columbia's computing requirements. Proceeding from there the outline develops around the 1934 establishment of a separate lab in the astronomy dept at Columbia, and then up to the efforts of H.A. Aiken, Harlow Shapley, T.H. Brown, and W.J. Eckert. Following this I s n extended review of Aiken's speech at the dedication of the calculator in 1944, including 10 of the significant inventions “of the many basic units of the calculator, invented or developed by IBM”. Here appears on pp 5-6a general description of the calculator. Appearing at the end of the pamphlet is the magnificent folding photo showing the entire face of the 51'-long computer, while in the photo legend are a number of nuts-and-bolts facts about the composition of the machine (including “530 miles of wire”).

Left half of the long photo, above:

Right half of the long photo, above:

• I should note that the Harvard Computation Lab published a 561pp manual of operation for the automatic sequence controlled calculator in 1946, written by H.H. Aiken and Grace M. Hopper. This is a very well illustrated report and it does reproduce almost the entirety of the front of the machine on two folding photo plates (#s II and III on pp 6 and 7)--again this is not the same scale as the pamphlet I'm offering here and it appears in two smaller photos rather than one large one. The Harvard book is of course a fantastic thing...

• “During World War II, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) funded and built an Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC) for Howard H. Aiken at Harvard University. The machine, formally dedicated in August 1944, was widely known as the Harvard Mark I. The President of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, Sr., did not like Aiken's press release that gave no credit to IBM for its funding and engineering effort. Watson and Aiken decided to go their separate ways, and IBM began work on a project to build their own larger and more visible machine.'

• "Columbia was a hotbed for computing technology. It boasted some of the first computing laboratories in the U.S., and in 1945 became home to the IBM Watson Scientific Laboratory led by astronomer W. J. Eckert. The Watson lab had first served as a computing center for the Allies in the final months of WWII. After the war, it became a site for developing some of the first super computers, including the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC)...”--McNeill, Leila, “How Margaret Dayhoff Brought Modern Computing to Biology”, Smithsonian Magazine, 9 April 2019

• “The IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), called Mark I by Harvard University's staff, was a general purpose electromechanical computer that was used in the war effort during the last part of World War II. One of the first programs to run on the Mark I was initiated on 29 March 1944 by John von Neumann.”--Wikipedia “Harvard Mark I”

Here's a description of the 1948 pamphlet introducing the IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC): 

 

Illustrated with an Impressive 27”-Long Photo of the SSEC Computer, 1948

Perhaps the World's First Stored Program Computer

IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator. International Business Machines Corporation, New York City, 1948. Original wrappers. 12”x 9”, 16 pp. Including a large (27”x 12”) foldout photo showing the computer as well as a floor plan of the machine. WorldCat/OCLC locates only 8 copies of this work. A very early announcement of the SSEC appeared in Business Machines, vol. 30, no. 11, March 15, 1948. 

• “The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was the first machine to combine electronic computation with a stored program, and the first machine capable of operating on its own instructions as data. When placed in operation in 1948, and for some time thereafter, it was the most flexible and powerful computer in existence. IBM published relatively little about it, and the SSEC has been largely overlooked by computer historians. This paper provides a historical setting for the SSEC.”--Bashe, Annals of Computing, 1982

• "Columbia was a hotbed for computing technology. It boasted some of the first computing laboratories in the U.S., and in 1945 became home to the IBM Watson Scientific Laboratory led by astronomer W. J. Eckert. The Watson lab had first served as a computing center for the Allies in the final months of WWII. After the war, it became a site for developing some of the first super computers, including the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC)...”--McNeill, Leila, “How Margaret Dayhoff Brought Modern Computing to Biology”, Smithsonian Magazine, 9 April 2019

• Astronomer Wallace John Eckert of Columbia University provided specifications for the new machine; the project budget of almost $1 million was an immense amount for the time. Francis "Frank" E. Hamilton (1898–1972) supervised both construction of the ASCC as well as its successor  Robert Rex Seeber, Jr. was also hired away from the Harvard group, and became known as the chief architect of the new machine. Modules were manufactured in IBM's facility at Endicott, New York, under Director of Engineering John McPherson after the basic design was ready in December 1945.” --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_SSEC

• “The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was an electromechanical computer built by IBM. Its design was started in late 1944, and it operated from January 1948 to August 1952. It had many of the features of a stored-program computer and was the first operational machine able to treat its instructions as data, but it was not fully electronic. Although the SSEC proved useful for several high-profile applications it soon became obsolete. As the last large electromechanical computer ever built, its greatest success was the publicity it provided for IBM.”