IBM Type 552 Alphabetical Interpreter
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IBM Type 552 Alphabetical Interpreter |
An interpreter adds printing to punched but otherwise blank cards, based on
what's punched on each card. Most were not capable of reading or
interpreting all 80 columns of a card. Thus the desired fields had to be
selected by wiring the control panel appropriately. In any case, the
printing characters were wider than the card columns, and did not line up.
The 551 and 552 models, by allowing more than one row to be printed, also
allowed interpretation of all 80 card columns by running the cards through
twice with different column and row selections. The 551 requires one pass
for each of up to 5 rows that is to be printed. The printing row is
selected by a knob, shown below. On the 557, up to 25 rows can be printed
in a signle pass. The print mechanism is a type bar; this is not dot-matrix
printing as on the key punch, which differs from
the printing on interpreted cards with its 1-to-1 correspondence with the
card columns.
CLICK ON ANY IMAGE to enlarge. |
Here's a table summarizing what I can find out about different IBM interpreter models:
| Type | Name | Introduced | Repertoire | Columns | Rows | Feed | Stacker | Speed |
| 541 | ||||||||
| 542 | ||||||||
| 550 | Automatic Interpreter | 1930 | Numeric | 45 | 1 | 800 | 1000 | 75 |
| 551 | Check Writing Interpreter | 1946? | Alphanumeric | 45 | 5 | 60 | ||
| 552 | Alphabetical Interpreter | 1946 | Alphanumeric | 60 | 2 | 60 | ||
| 557 | Alphabetic Interpreter | 1954 | Alphanumeric | 60 | 25 | 800 | 900 | 100 |
| 548 | Interpreter | 1958 | Alphanumeric | 60 | 2 | 700 | 900 | 60 |
 Type 550/551 |  552 Knob |  551 Knob |  552 Panel |  Type 557 |  Type 548 |
(CLICK HERE for a color photo of the 550.) The 551 or its successors (if any) is/are known to millions of people who received US government or other checks printed on IBM cards or punched-card bills from public utitilities up until the not-too-distant past. Special features of the 551 included regular plus double-width type (e.g. to emphasize the amount of a check) and automatic asterisk fill (to prevent additional digits from being added after the fact), as shown in the following sample check:
