JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

This is a repost from my books-for-sale pages, basically catalog entries (minus the sales stuff) for two very seldom seen works on early (and famous) IBM machines, the ASSC (1945) and the SSEC 

With a Giant Fold-out Photo Illustration of the Mark I (the ASSC) Computer, 1945

IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. Published by International Business Machines Corporation, 1945. 11”x 8.5”, 6pp. Illustrated with a massive (30” x 11”) folding photographic plate of the computer which seems to be the first image of the full length of the machine. (An earlier but less inclusive report appears in Popular Mechanics in 1944 (in an unusually-titled article, “Robot Solves Problems”) and though it does have a photo of the computer only shows a small piece of it. This photo is just fantastic, and it would seem to be the first full frontal image of the great computer. It is also one of the most impressive computer photos I’ve ever seen of any of the early machines. 

This pamphlet tells the story of the ASCC starting with the establishment of the Columbia University Statistics Bureau in 1928 (for adapting IBM machines for Columbia’s computing requirements. Proceeding from there the outline develops around the 1934 establishment of a separate lab in the astronomy dept at Columbia, and then up to the efforts of H.A. Aiken, Harlow Shapley, T.H. Brown, and W.J. Eckert. Following this I s n extended review of Aiken’s speech at the dedication of the calculator in 1944, including 10 of the significant inventions “of the many basic units of the calculator, invented or developed by IBM”. Here appears on pp 5-6a general description of the calculator. Appearing at the end of the pamphlet is the magnificent folding photo showing the entire face of the 51′-long computer, while in the photo legend are a number of nuts-and-bolts facts about the composition of the machine (including “530 miles of wire”).