As with all IBM punch-card
equipment except the key punch and sorter, a control panel (left)
is wired to specify the details of operation: what card columns to read and
what to do with them, how to format the report. Although the 407 is really
just a big adding machine, creative use could be made of the control
program; for example, as described by Roger L. Boyell in Programmed
Multiplication on the IBM 407,
Journal of the ACM, Volume 4, Number 4, October, 1957, pp.442-449.
In 1955, the
407 was
adapted to act as an input/output device for
the IBM 650 computer, and would later perform similar
roles for other IBM calculators (such as the CPC-II)
and computers (7090); reportedly,
a 407 even served as the "system clock" for Columbia's
7094.
I.F. Stone points out, "The speed
was a function of what you were doing. If you were just posting, reading a
card and printing, the maximum speed was a whopping 150 cards per minute.
There was a model E8, that was offered with the IBM 1620 to be used as an
offline printer. That was a stripped unit that would skip every third cycle
and was crippled to run at 100 cards per minute. With the purchase of 2
relays (if I remember corectly) and adding a jumper you could defeat the
crippling circuitry and get it back to 150 cpm."
Mike McCants, a 1620 programmer at Rice University in the 1960s, comments
(November 2002), "As one who helped perform such a modification in 1963, my
memory is a little different. There were already two extra relays in this
model E8. The purpose of the two extra relays was to count 1, count 2, and
then cause the machine to pause. Thus the 150 cards/minute printer was slowed
to 100 cards/minute. My memory is that it took us only an hour or so to read
the documentation in the back of the cabinet and figure out how to bypass the
two relays and restore the 407 to its rated speed of 150 cards/minute. This
happened about one hour after the SE finished installing the machine
:-)"
|
The IBM 407 Accounting Machine (1949).
This was the last and best of the all-electromechanical IBM accounting
machines (previously known as tabulators). The
407 reads a deck of punched cards on its integrated card reader (left),
accumulates totals, subtotals, or other simple statistics in counters made
of gears, and prints the results on its integrated 132-column line printer
(center). Speed: 100 to 150 cards per minute (the 407 replaced the earlier
typebar printing technology with a much faster print wheel mechanism).
The control panel was about 16 inches square with metal rim and grasping
handle, containing a matrix of holes sectioned off into functional areas with
small labels printed in white. To program the machine to do a particular task
(such as read a deck of cards, print each card in a certain format, add up the
numbers in columns 40-48, and print the total), jumper wires of various
lengths and colors were inserted to connect pairs of holes, such as card
columns to printer columns, card columns to accumulators, and (always) "CI to
C". When your program is complete, you open the door on the right, put in the
control panel, then close the door; thus different programs could be easily
swapped in and out. Various other IBM EAM and unit record equipment were
programmed the same way. Probably the most common (and certainly most
mundane) use of the 407 in later years was offline listing of card decks onto
paper.