from John Van Gardner stories - see # 11
Before computers, one of the most lucrative jobs at Lockheed was to be an Expediter. The highly paid men had to know the flow through all the departments and shops of each airplane part manufactured in the plant.
If a workman was supposed to install a part on an airplane and the part was not in its place a phone call was made to an Expediter. He would begin calling each shop that had anything to do with making the part to find out where it was in and how long it would take to get it to the workman that needed it.
When IBM announced the 305 RAMAC System Lockeed ordered one to keep up with where each part was in the plant. Some of the 705 CEs were trained on the 305 to install and maintain it. It was installed in a small room next to the EAM room with a window that opened into a corridor.
To acquire the data about the parts to be feed into the 305 some IBM 066/068 Transceivers were installed. The 066 was a modified 026 Keypunch and the 068 was a small electronic unit that held all the pluggable units and power supply. Transceivers could be connected over leased phone lines and a deck of cards placed in the transmitting unit. It would read the cards and send the data one column at a time to the receiving machine, which would punch a duplicate deck of cards at the other end. There was no difference between the transmitting and receiving machine. Holes punched in a card on the program drum determined what the machine did. If you punched an 8 hole in column one of the program card that machine became the transmitter. The 068 had pluggable resonate circuits that controlled the frequency it used. Four different pairs of Transceivers could operate on the same phone line at the same time.
Every part manufactured had an IBM card associated with it. It was called a “Travel Card”. When a part entered a shop a travel card was sent to the 305 and recorded on the large disk file. When the part left the shop another travel card was sent to the 305 telling of the parts destination.
When the system became operational all anyone had to do to find a part was to either call the 305 Operator and give them the part number or come to the window and ask about it. The Operator would make and inquiry on the console and the machine would print out the status of the part.
One day when I was in the RAMAC room working on one of the Transceivers a woman came to the window and wanted to see Mr. Ramac. She said her boss told her to go ask Ramac where a certain part number was. She was so used to the old Expediter system she thought Ramac was a man.
Another day I had finished working on a Transceiver and was watching Leon Chambers work on the B1 typewriter on the 305. I was bent over looking in the end of the typewriter when the diagnostic program did a Tab command and none of the tab stops had been set. The carriage took off and the knob on the right end hit me square between my eyes. It stunned me so I lost my balance and fell backwards against the wall. I had just been KOed by Mr. Ramac.
If you have comments or suggestions, Send e-mail to Ed Thelen