Visiting again? Updates
First Stored Program Computer
General Motto,
General Items
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Not so general
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Items specific to Computer History Museum - CHM in Mountain View, Ca.
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Demonstrations of the 'Manchester Baby' ;-)) received Nov 6, 2009
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Yes, We do have the 'Baby' computer, the first stored program computer
in the world. It is usually demonstrated on Tuesdays by volunteers,
including some of the guys who worked on the original 'Baby' project.
Unfortunately, next Tuesday will be the last time the 'Baby' is demonstrated for several months, and it won't be on display for a few months from the end of next week either, due to a major refurbishment project at MOSI. From approximately next April it will be housed in much nicer surroundings as part of our up-coming 'Revolution Manchester' gallery.
Kind regards,
Sarah Baines
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Image permissions:
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Most of the images on this web site:
I am advised by the Museum (July 20, 2006) that
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General Motto,
Typically, I showed up with out registering,
me - a school teacher??, collected a notebook of
blue prints of overviews and details - dropping the course when the next meeting
was going to be trying your program on the machine -
and you had to be registered to do that -
I kept that notebook until about 1980 when kids were leaving home and we were
down sizing.
Hello Ed, Very interseting site on the IBM 604. I graduated from an electronics school in Mpls in 1960. Our instruction back than on computers consisted of flip-flop circuits to learn basics. An interesting project was the Overbeck ring and an "electronic roulette wheel" using the 2-xxxx triggers - flip-flops. After I graduated from tech school I ended up in Seattle,WA. What luck, a local scrap yard had an old IBM 604 for sale. My roommate and I rented a trailer and hauled the cpu home and scrapped it out. Really big filament transformers for all those tubes.. I managed to save 1 of the racks full of flip-flops, and's or's etc. The rack still is in my storage shed.... My point... do you have any of the old modules ? Want a couple for your desk, or wall. When I pass I'm sure the kids will get a large dumpster...... I live in Seymour Cray's home town and they have a great Cray museum here. Perhaps this would also be a good home, I donnated a couple of the modules to them already, people there really didn't know what the solid state modules in todays world replaced.. Thanks again Ed... L Roth Chippewa Falls, WI
and a response from Robert Garner
Thanks for your informative note to Ed.
Turns out that an older colleague of mine (Hans Coufal) at IBM Almaden Research (who's no longer with us), had reportedly collected much of a 604, apparently still in storage somewhere in L.A. Your collection of spare modules could come in handy some day if these 604 components gets donated to the say the Computer History Museum and some volunteers elect to restore it. (There are crazy folks around thinking of restoring a tube machine some day...). So don't throw anything away! There is reportedly a working IBM 604 at the "House of the History of IBM Data Processing" in Sindelfingen, Germany.)
- Robert
p.s. Did you see our 1401 restoration project at the CHM?: http://ibm-1401.info/index.html
p.p.s. I am looking for 700-series style tube socket...
Updated Aug 2010
HOWEVER
In one of my bouts with college, the newspaper mentioned there was a series
of classes, for school teachers,
to be held in the St. Paul (Minnesota) Library about computers.
A "design engineer" would be presenting the ERA/RemingtonRand 1103A.
Mike Milgram just reminded me that many (computer) manuals can already be found
on repositories such as bitsavers.org
which has accessable PDF files for most manufacturers at
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/.
Look there to see if your manual(s) are present there.
From: L Roth
To: IBM 604
Sent: Sunday, February 07, 2010
Subject: hello, 604 units
L Roth,
If you have comments or suggestions, Send e-mail
to Ed Thelen.
Some
flattering pictures of Ed,
Gleanings,
conversion of documents to digital format (digital library)
Private stash - PowerMac,
Disk Storage