Autonetics Recomp (circa. 1960) rescue

Al Kossow wrote: History San Jose was selling off some of the Perham collection today, mostly old VTRs and some radio stuff. Got a call that there were two KSR 35s, one of which we identified as the console from the SDS 930, and an ASR 33 out there, so I drove down to retrieve them. When I got there, the RECOMP was on the pallet next to one of the 35s. I'm going to try to set up a time to go through the computer stuff to try to find the rest, but I'm not hopeful, since I don't recall seeing the desk or typewriter. ---------------- Billy writes: Al, Congratulations! That is a hell of a find, my friend. I'm immensely pleased to see at least one of these survived. In the last box of stuff I loaned you is a thick white binder from Autonetics. It is the Theory of Operations and Maintenance manual for several models of the Recomp. One of the early chapters has some details on the differences between the different models. So you even have some documentation! The ones I worked on in the Army all used a Flexowriter for the I/O typewriter. I'd be surprised if a Model 35 ever worked on a Recomp - too many years in between them. There are some details in the book describing early computers that Ed Thelen scanned and put up on his site. (Some where in the garage is another copy of that plus an earlier edition, both in great shape.) Because there is a flat disk for main memory, in the Army we called this the "Jukebox". There were at least a dozen of these at Redstone Arsenal. They were used to program the "stable table" of the Redstone missile. I believe they were also used on some of the early NASA shots that used the Redstone as a first stage booster. I'm pleased for you - the Recomp is one of the rarest computers to find in our hobby. Billy