Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2007 19:18:11 +0100 From: "Arno Kletzander" <Arno_1983 at gmx.de> Subject: Mechanical calculators (was: Re: *updating* 8088's) M H Stein <dm561 at torfree.net> wrote: ------- MHS: I realized that, which is why I left the original subject line. I just thought it was a relevant and interesting link to the other thread about IBM punch card equipment which was very similar in function but replaced manual entry with punched cards; the second part of my reply dealt with the type you're talking about. ------ "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: Yes, exactly that is the class of machines I meant. There were similar ones which printed on a platten carriage mounted behind the adding machine body, and some of the latest electromechanical models had a "type box" as a means of commenting the ledgers, invoices - whatever. The letters were assigned as secondary functions to some of the keys and the machine would print those instead of accepting numeric input when it was in a column definded for comments (which was done by sticking pegs into a programming board moving together with the carriage). -- Arno Kletzander ------ MHS: And those were the "posting" or "accounting" machines I was talking about; in the Burroughs line that I worked with, the electro-mechanical ones equivalent to the IBM punch card equipment we've been discussing were the "Sensimatic" F series, programmed by a removable program panel with two sets of "pins," one that determined the actual operation to be performed and sort of equivalent to the IBM patchboards, and another to control carriage movement (sort of equivalent to the forms control tapes of an IBM 40x). The panels had a selector knob which rotated the tab stops to four different sets of positions and shifted 4 sets of program pins sideways slightly, so that one panel served for four "programs" and of course you could have as many panels as you needed. Incidentally, Fs could optionally also punch PPT & cards. I had three of these at one time, but scrapped them all long ago. The later electronic versions were the "E" series; a good brochure with pictures of a type of computer largely ignored in the various histories (although there's a brief mention in The Encyclopedia of Microcomputers), with core memory and magnetic stripe & PPT/EPC I/O, can be found here: http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Burroughs/Burroughs.E1400… (Chuck: change the colour, remove the cabinet on the left and put it on tubular legs and you've got the picture you're looking for - remove the alpha keyboard for one of the older numeric-only models ;-) This is a fairly small one with the electronics in the desk itself (although you can see the thick cable connecting the console to the processor), and it is still programmed with the same type of program panel; the cabinet on the right is a 4003 auto-reader for magnetic stripe cards, usually master file records whose data was usually merged/combined with the data on the mag stripes of the transaction cards feeding through the carriage. Larger models (E2000 etc.) had a separate electronics cabinet the size of a large freezer. Come to think of it, I still have the desk from an E1200 I scrapped long ago which is presently supporting a Cromemco System 3, and also still have one of the tape perforators you can see on the right side of the E1200 in that brochure, as well as a few other odd parts... The "E" series was later replaced by the "L" series which finally abandoned the full keyboard and used "normal" machine language programs loaded from PPT or ledger cards (and, later, cassettes). That was the machine, incidentally, which got me out of being an "employee" and took me into self-employed programming, consulting and support, which is what I've been doing for the last thirty-odd years, so I have fond memories of it... The last Burroughs machines of this class were the B80 & B90 which used disks and represented the transition to more conventional computers, with optional displays and terminals, datacomm etc. m