The IBM 1620 restoration project

IEEE Annals of the History of Computing

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 33-43

  Spicer, Dag ^a  

^a Software Industry Special Interest Group   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMPUTER DEBUGGING; DATA STORAGE EQUIPMENT; DIGITAL ARITHMETIC; HISTORY; LOGIC CIRCUITS; MUSEUMS; RESTORATION; TABLE LOOKUP;

ARITHMETIC LOGIC UNIT; HISTORICAL RESTORATION; RESTORATION PROJECT;

ANALOG COMPUTERS;

EID: 25844452694     PISSN: 10586180     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1109/MAHC.2005.46     Document Type: Article

References (10)

1. Swade describes the compound identities of museums as "... temple, warehouse, fairground," See D. Swade, "Computer Conservation and Curatorship" at http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/CCS/resect/ resw01.html#curatorship.
2. See D. Nye, Am. Technological Sublime, MIT Press, 1994, pp. 3-22.
3. D. Nye, Am. Technological Sublime, MIT Press, 1994, pp. 3-22.
4. Erwin Tomash, personal communication (email), 7 Dec. 2002.
5. Roy Strong, director, Victoria and Albert Museum, The Listener, 25 July 1985.
6. See C. Burton, "Replicating the Manchester Baby - Motives, Methods, and Messages from the Past," elsewhere in this issue.
7. Structural analysis of major portions of the former World Trade Center, for example, were computed on a 1620. See R.E. Taylor, "Computers and the Design of the World Trade Center," J. Structural Division, ASCE, vol. 92, ST-6, Dec. 1966, pp. 75-91.
8. For a detailed summary of this initial and important meeting, see http://hissa.ncsl.nist.gov/mlists/ibml620/199811/19981129-1.html.
9. The choice of "iRAM" was a deliberate play on the company and product names emerging during the Internet boom (1998-2000) in which many new products or companies seemed to have an "e" or an "i" in front their names, representing the words electronic or Internet, respectively.
10. The term "steeples of excellence" was first coined by Stanford engineering professor Frederick Terman - the father of Silicon Valley - who thought it better for Stanford University to focus on just a few key areas in engineering and be the best possible place for research in these specific knowledge domains. By way of "audiovisual materials," I refer here to a film by Fred Gruenberg made for the Rand Corp. using the 1620 to demonstrate simple arithmethic programs, and even the strange use of 1620 control panels in the campy 1969 Universal Pictures science-fiction film "Colossus: The Forbin Project." For a list of 1620 trivia, see the museum's official IBM 1620 Web site, http://www.ibm1620.org.