Anyone heard of a North Plug or IBM wire relays ... Re: Jones plugs, or similar sorts of plugs

William Donzelli wrote: In the early 60's a machine control my employer used on a can-end making stamping presses (think pull-top beer cans) was built using IBM "wire" relays. The IBM sourced chassis had an array of sockets for the relays with a wirewrap (?) backplane. The chassis was connected to the machine with a large multi-blade connector very similar to the Jones connectors that have been talked about, although smaller in size, they were larger in contact count. The connector was always described as the "North plug". Our BOM system says it was sourced from North Electrical. The "wire" relays were quite simple. They consisted of multiple Form C contacts. The moving contact was a wire tack welded to the armature. By my time they had pretty much been replaced by a CD4000 based digital logic system. Stories were told about the tack weld fatiguing and the wire contact shorting things in arbitrary ways. Not a desirable feature for a stamping press control. I have been curious about the relays since I found a cannibalized chassis about 10 years ago, which I still have. I thought that the technology might have been used on tabulating machines, but I never did any research. I can take pictures of it to jog memories. Anybody (Mr. Donzelli) recall IBM equipment like this? -chuck