My Early Days With IBM and Sorbus

Forward

I do not wish to imply that I was a great wizard in my days as a C.E. I had my share of failures. It is just that I remember the success better than my failures.

This is about people, events and machines.

IBM Stock.

When some of my family heard that I was joining IBM someone sent me a story from a weekly news magazine. A woman was living in the eastern part of the country. It seems that her husband after his retirement had become sick and after a lengthily illness had finally passed away having greatly exceeded the maximum limit on their health insurance. That resulted in leaving her with a massive debt and creditors after their payments.

She decided the only thing she could do was to sell her house and most of her furniture and move into a small apartment. In the process of getting ready to move in a smaller place she was going through a old trunk in the attic, sorting and discarding decades old invoices. Among bills an other obsolete material she found a stock certificate for 100 shares of a company. She was hoping that it may have some value as she checked the financial section of her paper but the company was not even listed. She threw the certificate in the trash later to retrieve it again. This happened several times till finally she thought she will just keep it. Later a friend that did some investing came by and she showed him the certificate. He recommended that she keep it and that he thought that it was somehow connected to IBM.

She had to borrow some money from a friend for a round trip bus ticket to the nearest city with a IBM office. In the local IBM office she contacted the office manager and asked him lf the shares were worth anything. He almost had a stroke when he saw it. The company stock she had was for a company called International Time Recording, and that name was later was changed to International Business Machines or IBM. The lady was patently waiting in the office for news about her stock, later she cornered the manager who then called the IBM New York headquarters to inquire about it*s value. They still had not at quitting time there computed it*s final value but the amount was up to $27,000,000 plus in 1950*s dollars.

IBM Job

A good friend at church worked in the data processing department a large company. He mentioned IBM as a place for me to work. I was petrified, I had heard so much about IBM that I was certain that I would be way out of my league there. He gave me the name of the person to call at the local IBM office, Doug Beckley. At the time I worked for a local telephone company in Whittier California ( GTE ) as an cable splicer’s helper. I was on the GI Bill and was making a very low salary even including the pay from the GI bill. I think the phone company encouraged men on the G.I. bill so they could get away with such a low salary.

One foggy morning I made the call to IBM from the top of a wooden telephone pole using a linesman*s belt phone. The pole had wooden cross arms with open iron wire between poles. I went up the pole with linesman*s hooks and belt, then I connected the phone to the open wires and dialed the operator. I said “Operator I want to make long distance call and bill it to my home phone.” She replied “OK and what number are you calling from?” I said “I don*t know.” She then said as though I were really dumb “what is the number on the dial of your phone.” In reply I answered “number 12.” She would not take only a 12 as the number and said “12 what?” I replied “just 12 I am a telephone lineman and that is all there is.” I explained where I was and I had no idea what this number was. She panicked and in a quivering voice said “I just started here today and no one told me what to do about this type of situation.” Finally she had her supervisor contact my wife for permission to bill our number. Doug was working on a tough machine trouble and he asked if I could call back later. I outlined where I was and how difficult that would be. After he stopped laughing he gave me a time for an interview. He always remembered that call. I was always the nut that called from the top of a telephone pole.

I was given an oral interview then given a ten question test with up to four multiple answers for answers for each question. All of the questions were loaded. The first part of each question was what are they asking. The question could be easily mis-interpreted for something else and you could easily misread it, that was part of the test. You wrote down the letter next to the answer you wanted. In the question there was an answer for the most obvious mistakes you might make. One question, number 7 was seemingly simple but it was really loaded. I believe it had a value of more than l/l0 of the total. It had a answer for the most obvious mistake that you could make. Later I took a medical exam. My medical examination papers lost for some time. Sometime later I received a call that I got the job. Much later I found out that they had 178 men apply for that one job and I got it.

IBM School

I was furnished with a great tool bag with lots of great tools in it, before going to Endicott for basic school I worked with the time division people doing preventative maintenance or PM on time clocks. One place that we went was to a big grain elevator to service some job time clocks. There was an interesting mode of transportation from floor to floor. There was a strong wide endless belt with projections sticking out at regular intervals. As a projection passed you stepped on either the up or the down side. The belt did not stop you timed your stepping on or off to match the belt. The cardinal rule was if the area around the belt was red and a bright red light was flashing that meant that this was the top or bottom floor and get off.

The electrical contacts inside these clocks had sealed covers. In a grain elevator dust could cause an explosion with any spark. I remember being up on the 12 ^th floor and looking out from a wide door that had a waist high metal bar across it. The end of my toes were over thin air. Far below I could see some pigeons gorging themselves on spilt grain. Something disturbed them and one huge overstuffed bird started running trying to get airborne. It came to a sudden drop off at a dock, still without enough speed to fly. It crashed into the pavement below feathers flying everywhere. It was against the rules to ride the belt with a tool bag in your hand so you took everything along you may need in your pockets.

Our South Gate IBM office was at the time I started IBM the fastest growing office in the entire company. At the time I was at school we had more customer engineers in school that were working in the home office. We were considering having a office party in Endicott. IBM basic was like nothing I had ever had before. First it was in a small town “Endicott” in upstate New York. The town had two large businesses a shoe manufacturing business ( Endicott Johnson ) and IBM. Many people there thought that the IBM people were stuck-up and later after close reflection I think so too.

On arrival you had a room reserved for two men for two night*s in the local hotel. There you got several handouts with a list of local people that rented rooms and the prices they charged for them. A map showing where the rooms were, also where the various school rooms and factory buildings were. The rooms farthest from everything were generally cheaper than rooms closed by in town. I was without wheeled transportation so I did a lot of walking.

The IBM school was in Endicott in upstate New York. I lived in southern California and loved the food that was available in California. The food in Endicott was bland to my taste. I would order a hamburger with everything. Everything meant a thin layer of butter and a single slice of dill pickle in the middle. Later I became friends with a man in a local restaurant and described the hamburger that I wanted and said how do you order one like that? He said “you order it ‘California’ style.” If you liked your coffee without cream you must say “Black Coffee” the word black must be first, even then it was a toss-up if you would get it black. In one downtown restaurant it took four cups before the waitress got it right, even then she almost added the milk. In California restaurants you would see signs advertising “Good old eastern flavor” in Endicott you saw the same type of signs proclaiming “That good old western flavor.”

You were responsible for getting a place to stay. Because I did not have a car I did a lot of walking. Some students did have automobiles and were popular men. They were able to rent the cheaper rooms further out than us on foot. We were given a maximum allowance of $27.00 dollars a week for all expenses room, and food.

Back in our home offices we did some self study on various machines but it was nothing like the real thing. There was a joke going around the school that if you dropped your pencil you would flunk because by the time you reached down to pick it up you would be so far behind that you could never catch up. The information came at you so fast. I am not sure that was actually a joke. We heard that if a college gave you information at the same rate you could get a full Masters degree in eighteen months or less. I can believe that. Then information came faster than I had ever seen before. It was more like a review for someone that already knew the information

Training was as follows, you received various machine manuals and schematics then you had a lecture on the circuitry and mechanics then you studied at home. Then exposure to the inside of the machine. You would eventually remove major parts and then reinstall and adjust them. An finally “bugs” ( troubles placed on the machine for you to diagnosis, electrical or mechanical. ) You would then write the problem on a slip of paper and hand it to the instructor who would grade you on the time it took to complete the diagnosis and how accurate your information was. We were also well graded on our use of hand tools. I rated myself a 10 there.

I got into a disagreement with our instructor. We were putting a steel collar on a steel shaft and putting a taper pin in it to hold it tight. You went to the tool cabinet and got everything you might need for the job. One of my tools was defective and I needed to get another one from the cabinet. When he was checking the finished assembly, he said “that is very good, but you did need to make a trip back to the office for something.” I said “not really I was replacing a defective tool that was in the cabinet. In the field if I had a defective tool and I could not replace it at the office I would buy my own. I always have had used good tools.” He did not mark me down now that he understood what happened.

The IBM school ran two shifts. Sometimes school had two classes going at the same time in the day and also two at night shifts. The one limiting factor was the number of machines in the lab. One group started in the morning on the machines while the other group was in the class room. That afternoon they switched. On Wednesday after class we had a singing rally and EVERYONE was invited. We had IBM songbooks and the sing-along format was always the same, first we sang patriotic songs then fun songs finally some IBM songs finally ending with “Ever Onward” the Star Spangled Banner of IBM. The leader would ask for requests from the floor. One evening we all got together and conspired not to request ‘Every Onward* so the song leader kept saying “one more song.” Eventually after an additional 10 songs we realized that we would see the sun come up if we did not make the request. You were never directly told so but you knew that to belittle the singalong was worth a quick trip home, without a job. I kept one of the song books for historical purposes. The Phoenix IBM office later denied that the book had ever existed till I showed them a Xerox copy.

The basic school was for 12 weeks with an additional optional 4 weeks for the 407. Toward the end of the 407 class I came across a typewriter repair trainee, he was complaining about the grueling four weeks that he was there. I gave him a hard time explaining that I had been there four times four weeks or 16 weeks and had no sympathy for him.

IBM customer engineers that worked in remote locations were called triple threat, that is they were trained in data processing, time equipment, and typewriter repair.

One day in downtown Endicott I passed by a telephone cable splicer down in a manhole, he must have had a new helper. He did not want to exit the deep hole so he was trying to make his helper understand what he needed. I showed the helper what he was talking about in less than a minute. The man in the hole offered me a job as his helper I declined. I had been there before.

While at school we were invited ( also required. ) to a dinner at the IBM country club. It was a fancy meal with good food with many waiters and an assortment of table hardware at each place. At each table was a older person not in school and I am sure that she was reporting about our table manners or possibly lack of. There was music, singing, and a orchestra playing.

During my stay in school we had a three day weekend. Another C.E. trainee from Sacramento California ( Also named Howard, our class had four ) invited me along and we drove in his Austin Healy to upstate New York. It was a sporty six cylinder vehicle with a two speed rear axle that was controlled by a dash mounted toggle switch. In it we visited Niagra Falls. That car would really GO! He let me drive it on the freeway which is now interstate 90, after a few miles I remarked that New Yorkers were sure drove poky. He asked how fast do you think you are driving. I looked at the calibrated speedometer and it was setting on 110 miles an hour. I slowed down to the legal 60 MPH speed limit and seemed so slow then I almost felt that I could get out and jog that fast. We visited the falls, Old Fort Niagra State park, and we had a short trip into Canada.

I was driving on the way back we were traveling south at night on a country road Hy 96 through the finger lakes area. We were behind what we called a ‘New York Hotrod.* That is it was loaded with stuff, lights, figurines, and such each vehicle was different but I am sure that the owner thought that it was cool. As near as I could tell the engine was stock. Most of the local Hotrod car engines had many shiny chrome parts, generators and starters among them. I had the power to pass him but I did not know whether the dark I could see ahead was ‘no cars* or ‘truck around a bend in the twisting country road.* After some miles we came to a four way stop. Ahead I could see the lights of a small community and the road was clear for well over a mile. I pulled out pass him but he accelerated to stop me from passing. The two speed rear end was in low range as Howard said “stay with him, stay wit him.” The small engine in the Austin Healy was well over the red line in RPM*s ( 6,000 ) and it was screaming. After a quarter mile of this the engine exhaust sound on the other vehicle indicated that it had toped out. I looked down and saw 87 mph on the calibrated speedometer. Finally Howard threw the rear axle drive switch to high range. That was a real experience the, engine took on a deep roar, the tires spun and the car wanted to fishtail. It felt as though we were hit from behind by something big. Considering that it was already going 87 mph we really took off. We passed the other car in a flash and we were through the small community in the blink of an eye. I was then over-driving my head lights on the then dark twisting road ahead so I slowed down to a saner speed. I have always wondered what that other driver thought then. I was certain that he thought that he was at least the equal that strange automobile when it broke rubber and sped off like that.

Another man from Southern California drove back to Endicott in his modified street legal rod. He had a trailer with a separate, ‘racing engine* and the equipment to switch. One weekend he went to the local drag races. He quickly realized that his racing engine was far superior to anything there, even his slightly modified regular engine was superior the ones racing there.

He asked what were the rules about racing equipment. There were essentially no rules other than it must be street legal, you entered your vehicle got a large number for the side door and had elimination races with other cars, the winner went on to the next race till someone won the finals. It had been some time since the top local racer had lost a event. His father was wealthy and he could buy whatever he wanted. The Technician from the west entered the contest with his racing engine and eventually the two were paired up in the finals. Needles to say the man from out west won hands down. Even so he did not really push his machine, just enough to handily win the final race. The local previous winner was immediately interested in this strange new vehicle.

When the people there heard the comment that he did not really push his machine, the statement was met with disbelief and astonishment. Wining over the former best and it could do even better, ‘show us.’ Another final was arranged. This time he pushed and he was not just ahead but to the finish line by the time his competitor was a little over halfway down the track. The engine was apparently breathing fire as the tires spun. Now there was really an interest in this strange looking machine. Everyone was gathered around it in admiration. “Just look the motor it had no major chrome parts, just some chrome acorn nuts along with some strange looking things on it.” The rich local man made an offer for it that could not be refused and the ownership changed hands.

The man from the west had been frequenting local salvage yards and seeing the most incredible things for sale, things long since gone from California salvage yards. He wants only five dollars for that transmission? Why back home it that condition it would sell for a minium of $250.00 dollars. And that rear end over there, priceless. I have not seen a engine block like that for sale in years. He bought a small flat bed truck and a trailer with his money from the local man and started haunting the local salvage yards on all of his time off. He was thinking this stuff will be worth a fortune at home. I can sell part, keep some and afford to make a real rod. I am sure his investment and time payed off.

REMEMBERED FIXES

I guess it is normal to remember unusual problems especially if you had a hand in their repair. Being a rookie the execrations were fortunately low. IBM was growing at a fast pace, especially our South Gate office in southern California and getting into school at the time I was hired took some time. I spent most of my pre-school time carrying parts for the older men and helping as a go-for. We could remove covers on machines in the office and play with the adjustments on them as long as we did not destroy anything too valuable.

I was sent out to help a man working on a tricky 407 problem. When data was printed and summary punched in a card on an attached 514, the 407 would have the dreaded ( reset check ) otherwise the 407 would work without a problem. He was snowed in and he was stuck. I was of no help because I had no idea what was happening. Trying to find something to do I glanced down at the control panel in the 514 punch. There was a control panel prong bent down and I asked if it were ok to straighten it. “Go ahead” was the reply. Fifteen minutes he asked do you remember where the bent prong was. I pointed to the prong that still had the marks of the bending and straightening. We placed a control panel wire there simulating the bent prong. The problem which had been gone was now back, the bent prong was the original problem and I had repaired it without knowing what I was doing.

After I was back from school for a short time I fell heir to a sticky problem on a 083 sorter. It ran cards at 1,000 a minute. If they were all going into the same stacker in the #4 pocket they would drag on the pocket sides and cause a jam. In you made an adjustment on that one pocket the adjacent one #3 would then have the problem. Each machine had a thin gray adjustment manual with all mechanical adjustments in it. In it’s information it said you must start at the far left #9 pocket and proceed toward the right-most pocket. That worked. Later my manager later asked about the fix and I told him of the sequence of adjustment that it required. He asked “where did get that information?” I said “I read it in the adjustment manual,” he looked surprised.

At a major tractor company parts warehouse in east Los Angeles there was a shinny new 403 that had a dual carriage, form feed, the only one that I ever saw. It would feed different forms at different times and different amounts under program control. The two part thick and very slick forms of paper on the right side tractor would slip and that would cause the feed pin guide to slip up causing misprinting and jamming. I did every test and adjustment I could think of including everything the grey adjustment manual all to no avail. I then tried various modifications ( Cluges ) still nothing. I was dying and nothing worked. Finally the account D.P. manager said “Why are the only one of six places nationally having this trouble.” It dawned on me this setup cannot possibly work the way it is and everyone is having the same trouble and just not communicating. I called my boss and said “has anyone thought to checked the other tractor parts places to find out if they having the same trouble?” He said “I don*t know but I will find out.” In about two hours he called me back to say all six installations were having exactly the same problem but no one had thought to cross check. I told the local D.P. manager there that he was not alone with this problem, then packed up my tool bag and left. Later when I was there on another machine and I looked at the printer operation and noted that the top and bottom right side slick forms now been stapled together, and it was working fine. problem solved.

Out in Pico there was a big tractor dealer that sold complete machines. The D.P. manager handed me a copy of letter he had mailed to a customer in Mexico, earlier the customer had overpaid an invoice, so they were sent a credit invoice. They promptly payed that also. Over and over they had doubled and redoubled the credit amount repeatedly by paying the amount label credit. They were finally sent a letter along with the invoice explaining that they do not have to pay the credit amount. He had a return payment again. He was exasperated. I took a card and wrote down the address of the customer. The manager wanted to know what I was doing that for, I said I am going to send them a invoice payable to me. We both laughed.

My boss sent me out to a customer as a pacifier one day, the old timer with the account had been trying to adjust the huge but delicate electro-magnet on a 402*s two speed clutch without success, but he was busy elsewhere at the time. The manager wanted me to be there to keep the customer happy but he did not expect me to be really successfully and actually adjust it, just be there and pretend that you are repairing it. As nearly as I could measure the clutch adjustments were perfect as per the grey manual. As I listened to the machine it sounded as though, I was on the western overlook at Hoover Dam. I could hear a much too loud 60 cycle hum coming from the machine. I got out my VOM and measured the DC voltage and it was set correctly ( 48 volts ). I then got a .05 mfd capacitor and using it in series measured the DC again on the meters AC scale. It had 18 volts ripple on a 48 volt DC power supply. I asked the D.P. manager if this machine had a history of many, one of a kind problems, he said “it has.” I told the customer that I needed to the office for parts. I replaced the two parallel 8,000 mfd capacitors and the hum was gone. I then measured the D.C. again and found that it was far too high now at ( 65 volts. ) I moved the adjustable transformer leads about till the D.C. voltage was set correctly at 48 volts under load. The A.C. ripple was now 1.2 v. The discoloration on the transformer indicated that was where the leads had been originally. The previous C.E. had been trying to adjust a huge electro magnet with a D.C. voltage that had a high ripple ( 18 volts ) on it, almost an A.C. voltage. Months later I was there working on a 082 sorter in the same place and I asker about the present reliability of the 402, after a moment of thought the D.P. Manager said “there has not been a single problem on it since you had last worked on it.” The other C.E. had be working on a symptom and not the real problem. Made me feel great.

I got a Saturday call on a 604 problem. The place had two machines. A new application that should work was failing. It did the same on both machines.

The 604 calculator had tubes that gave three output pulses on a program step. Various functions would accept this output and do that operation. Stepping the machine through had exactly the same results. Finally I ran a specially wired test panel. One of the three outputs for one program step was dead.. The other end of the plug wire was to a divide latch. The other machine had a bad divide latch. The results was the same on both calculators.

The Los Angeles area had Technician that was sharp on one of IBM’ new big computer. He received numerous call for help from all over the country often late at night. One night he was out on a help call, in another state. His wife answered the phone call. She asked the calling Tech some of the questions that she had heard her husband ask. One question led to the calling Tech to reach a solution. Later she explained hearing her husband ask the same questions many time before. She did not even know what that machine looked like.

I was in the town of Whittier California and the dispatcher asked me to stop by the high school where I had graduated to work on a 805 test scoring machine. ( A machine that could read the current through pencil marks with special lead on a paper and record the results on an analog meter. ) Because I had never even seen one before I didn’t know how to operate it. So I used the old ploy “show me the trouble.” Translated that meant “How do you operate it?” The operator ran some papers through explaining the failure, as I watched how she operated it. I removed the many small screws holding the top cover down and tilted it up, not knowing where else to begin. There directly before my eyes was a wire with a crimped connector it*s end, it was hanging just below a brass bolt and all over a brass nut and washer laying on the base. I replaced the wire, washer and the nut, and then tightened the nut and said try it now. Fortune was with me, it worked perfectly and I got credit for a great and speedy fix. Glen Able normally took care of that machine but for him it was intermittent and the wire had not come completely loose yet. When he lifted the covers to look inside the connection was pulled taught and it worked fine. The next time they had a problem they asked for me because of the speedy repair I had made on a intermittent trouble the last time I was there. That was my second call on that machine. After that I got lots of experience on that type of machine.

One of our customers at a steel fabricating plant that had a strong union that had just gone on strike. Our field manager Doug Beckley asked me to go out there to repair a 407 if the strikers would let me through. I was to ask for permission to pass and if it was denied promptly leave. When I arrived at the gate I was greeted by a union shop steward and four burly men blocking the gate. I said that “I was from IBM and wanted to go in and repair a machine, is it ok to pass.” The Stewart said “NO!“ I thought I was bluffing when I said as I backed out onto the street “Ok but the machine I need to fix is the one printing your last paychecks till the strike is over.” ( Only one of their 407's had the ability to print payroll checks. ) That got his full attention, he followed me out to the street and while ducking big trucks as he pleaded for me to please come back in. Later I found out that if I had been denied entry the company by law did not need to make the last payroll payment till after the strike was over. To my amazement the bluff was actually true that was the very job and machine that was down. But I had established a precedent and from then till the strike was over the only two vehicles were actually welcome in that gate and that was mine and the lunch wagon.

One day when I arrived there were the same union shop steward but a new crew of huge men blocking the path. The shop foreman was talking on the phone in the guard shack with his back turned to me. I just sat there with the men still blocking the path and glaring at me till the shop steward happened to looked around. When he saw what was happening he turned loose of the phone in mid air, and ran out and did a flying tackle on the four men blocking the gate knocking them down. Over his shoulder he waved at me to continue in as he was admonishing the four men now lying flat on the ground.

Later the D.P. Manager there said that he would rather insult the CEO of the company than antagonize the IBM Customer engineer, good thinking on his part.

At the same big steel company the machine room ran 24/7/365 and one type of machine actually ran all the time, the 077 collator. Under those conditions there was a certain gear that lasted at best two months, less if you did not keep it properly lubricated. It took several hours to replace it and restore the timings that were lost in the removing. I got in the habit of taking a small piece of metal and scooping the grease back on the gear each day on each machine. One day I thought why not make something that would scoop the grease all the time and perhaps it will prolong the gear*s life. I built one and clipped it place and it worked. The gear then lasted indefinitely. I submitted a suggestion for the device. Suggestion Award $1,475.00

I got stock reply answer number X-10. I wrote several follow-up letters which my wife typed for me, even when she was busy with our three daughters. One day a district official stopped and asked if all was going well. I mentioned my frustration with the suggestion department about my idea. The Southgate office had enough made for all of our machines and for nearby Long Beach. After looking at it he asked “What is their objection” he said. I said “they tell me it will not work” at the time he was watching it work. He asked me to send to him all of my correspondence about it.

For some time I was the office night man, I came in at two p.m. and worked till either ten p.m. or till all of the calls were done. About three weeks later at an office meeting I was called forward and presented with a suggestion award certificate, one of the managers said “have you spent the money yet.” I said “what money?” They started “looking for the money.” Someone then brought in a huge colander and held it up as they poured in it three bags of silver dollars, The total amount for the suggestion was $ 1,475.00. I was stunned all of the managers shook my hand and patted me on the back. Then they said do you want to call your wife. I did and I said “I won that suggestion award.” Like a good wife she asked “How much was it for.” Like a good husband I said “guess.” She said “$150.00” I said “more.” “$250.00” she ventured with excitement in her voice. I replied “much more.” Her next guess was an excited $1,000.00 I said “$1,475.00.” She let out a little scream of joy. Another Technician volunteered to take my place for the remainder of my night shift so I could go home and celebrate with her. I had the option of the silver dollars or the check I took the check. The total amount had the taxes deducted.

One IBM technician turned in a suggestion for the 729 tape drive. Inside the drive was a series of solenoids that controlled tape motion. It needed to be taken apart to clean. It was a precision adjustment and required some hours to finish by using an oscilloscope. The assembly needed to be taken apart and cleaned once a week on drives that were used heavily. That cleaning destroyed all of the adjustments. Some big systems may have up to 100 drives or more. One man if he were good could do two a day. The change allowed the entire task to be completed in thirty minutes without losing the adjustments. He was giver the largest award ever given at that time. $27,000.00.

He was at a IBM school at the time. His wife was flown to the school site for the award ceremony without his previous knowledge that she was there.

HOW TO CALL A C.E.

1. Never call for a C.E. until everyone has had time to form his own opinion as to how to fix the problem.

2 Give dispatch an urgent call to send a C.E.

3. Alert guard or receptionist so that C.E. has trouble getting into machine room..

4. Ask him why it took him so long to get there.

5. Make sure someone has just started a long on machine.

6. Hide all print and manuals for machine .

7. Ask how soon the machine will be operating again.

8. Block machine so that C.E. cannot get to the Covers.

9. Hide all samples of intermittent failures.

10. Tell C.E. this is the same trouble we had three months ago.

11 Ask again when it will be operating.

12. Make sure operator that bad failure is out when C.E. arrives.

13. Tell him the last C.E. had the machine running much quicker.

14. Ask him many questions which are in no way connected with the trouble at hand.

15. Ask again, how soon the machine will be operating.

16. When he finally gets the machine running, tell him what a good job he has done, although he should have done it much faster.

17. After he leaves, call his boss and tell him the machine is worse now than it was before. This will give him a chance to come in again and you can go through the above rules again.

Although I never saw the above ever published, it must

have been printed or taught because every single item in the above list has happened to me repeatable.

At the big steel fabricating company a parking spot was reserved for their IBM Technician very close to the machine room I found that I could touch the closest machine and the hood of my car at the same time.

Their machine room was like most, was very noisy. One day a man arrived with some building materials to build a sound partition between the keypunches and the remainder of the other much nosier machines. The man laid out a measured chalk line on the floor and took out a drive-it. He loaded it with a blank bullet and drove a nail through a two by four into the cement floor. I was across the room and as I looked toward the source on the noise. I could see papers and punched cards flying through the air all the way to the ceiling. I remember thinking “some sort of explosion blew all of that into the air.” Actually the items were originally in the hands a lady verifier operator as she was just setting down. When the gun shot took place on the floor right behind her chair. Her reaction was to throw everything high up in the air. The next day the D.P. manager said that he would have been ahead if he had sent all the girls home due to the large number of keypunch errors made after the shot.

Another customer far from the Southgate office but north of my house was a company was that made heating and cooling equipment. They had a 407 that was loaded with every option available. On rare occasions it would get a reset check ( meaning that what printed from the mechanical counters did not match what was in the counters before the printing ) the trouble was very intermittent and consequently very hard to trouble shoot. I could never get a failure in my tests. One day I was frustrated and started checking things on the machine in general. I found a serious fluctuation in the machines D.C. voltage. After some time I finally I measured the A.C. input line voltage and I saw a deep double drop of more than ( 48% ) in the line voltage also. The machine power transformer was part of a ( constant voltage power supply ) but the dip was overcoming it. The machine D.C. voltage would rise when line voltage would dip very low then when the line would rise back to normal the D.C. machine voltage would fall. It would go the opposite direction from the line voltage. When the huge D.C. dip coincided with a high current demand on one of the occasional 407 operation the reset check would occur.

The D.P. manager and I went out to see the shop maintenance engineer. He said that the dip was due to a huge multi-head spot welder that made 12 parallel welds at a time then moved over slightly and quickly made 12 more. We went to the power panel room and he showed me the analog meters that indicated the current and voltage for the three areas in the building. They had connected the welder to the office buss because of the normally low load there.

The input voltage dipped from 600 to 400 volts and the current went from 200 to 400 amps at each of the two welds as read by the analog meters. The spot welder was making gas manifolds for heaters from heavy stamped sheet metal parts. That dip explained the general lack of reliability in all our office machines there including a 604. They said that in their previous location a nearby movie theater had problems with the light output from their projectors when the welder was working. I said that under the conditions there was nothing that I could do for him. It was always a joy to find that a sticky problem was not my responsibility.

At still another Whittier customer a huge cemetery. Staying non profit was sometimes a problem. In the data processing department the CEO’s son was presently working. He was getting to know all of the various parts of the business. The son had a upcoming wedding and the incoming gifts were being stored, opened on some tables along one wall in the D.P. room. I was looking at them and noted that almost every gift had an electrical cord attached to it. Because I lived very close to the instillation I went home for lunch that day. On the way home I stopped at a hardware store and bought a gift for him. At home I wrapped it in fancy paper and found a card to attach to it. I gave it to him when I returned, he said that I was not expected to give them anything. I insisted and he opened it. In it was a box of four screw in 40 amp house fuses. I said that if they plug in too many of their other gifts at the same time they would need them. He laughed as he said “That is what you would expect from an IBM C.E.” We then all laughed.

Their database was huge. Many people were buying cemetery lots on time payments and the printout was a two part form, accordion folded. The stack over two and one half foot tall with many entries on each sheet. It required someone looking through the entire list to find anyone who was delinquent in paying.

A new Data processing manager changed that to what He called an exception report. It was less than one inch thick and it included only delinquent*s. The first time it came out everyone was shocked by the smaller size but eventually they understood that this was much better and lot*s easier to work with. He also started a systematic reduction in various reports. He would randomly put a finished report on his desk. Depending on how often it was printed, he placed the next report on top of the last one. When the stack had three scheduled reports and no one had called for their report and they were not on vacation or in a hospital it was delegated to as needed only report. He gave them as much information as before but not in unless reports. Prior to this they had a crew of seven working in the daytime and a crew of four working at night. Still giving everyone as much information as required he had a crew of only two working one shift.

World War II

One of the old-time IBM C.E.’s was relating to me his experiences during World War II. It seems that he was working at a IBM installation out in the far Pacific. It was at a U.S. Navy base and most of the machines were well past their prime. One machine especially, a tabulator 405.

They were at the wrong end of a long supply line. Although he maintained a supply of normal parts, occasionally something would break/bend for which he did not have as a spare. He found that the machinists for the Navy were able to make nearly every thing necessary to keep things running. The tabulator a 405 was in sorry shape and needed constant work just make it through the next report. One day he was told that the Japanese were nearby and likely would soon overrun the base. He was given a full case of theremite grenades with instructions to destroy each machine so that they could not be reactivated, or copied or reused by the Japs. Knowing what to destroy on each machine to totally render it unusable he sparingly placed grenades on all of the machines saving plenty for the tabulator. It was covered with them. When he had them burning the entire tabulator was fused into the cement floor in a molten cauldron. It was impossible to tell what had been there before because it was now a slag pool. “The feeling I had while it melted was close to madness” he said. He confided to me that he was afraid the U.S. would retake the place and he would be required to keep servicing it. He also said “I bet the Japanese wondered what that slag pile had been. Possibly some secret device?

The Rookie on His Own

My first regular assigned customer was a large tire company in east Los Angeles. They had a good sized installation of machines and a Data processing crew four men and about twelve keypunch and verifier operators with a supervisor for each department. The programer was very good. Once when I found a mistake in his wiring for a new 407 job, I really studied the manuals carefully before I told him he had made an error in wiring and how to chance it. He augured with the new guy for a while till I pointed to a paragraph in the manual stating that you cannot do it that because it will not always work all the time on every machine. He had programed in on one machine and was attempting to run the job on another machine and that one would not work. What he was doing worked on two of the 407*s but not the third so he placed a call on that machine. The problem was based on some close timings inside the machine. The variable machine timings were within the +/- tolerance for some circuit breakers but it may not work.

The woman in charge of the keypunch section officially worked for the man in charge of the entire department, but she usually got her way. One of the keypunch operators was continually complaining about some vague problem on her machine and I could usually find nothing wrong with it. One day I suggested a test and the Data processing manager agreed, after everyone went home for the evening we swapped all cover that had scratches or any markings on them with a machine across the isle and left the identifiable parts ( covers ) in the same place. It still looked like her machine. The first thing the next morning she still had the same problems so we asked her to try the machine across the isle. She said that one was working perfectly. It was her own machine with different covers and location. He told her to come into his office and when she left it she picked up her things and left. I never did see her again.

One keypunch operator at that company could remember the exact problem, time, and date of every failure her machine ever had. She would say it is doing the same as it was on this past time and date, many times it was many months ago. I always attempted to get her to describe what was the failure now, to no avail. One day it was having a intermittent problem and I knew that she would compare it to a older problem. So I asked her to punch a series of numbers that I could remember before I started. The machine would not fail at that time. The next morning she said that it was doing the same as the previous day and also on a named earlier time and date. I asked her to punch the same sequence of numbers as I had given her the day before. She replied “when an operator types something and goes on to the next item she forgets the old data.” I said that “When I go on to a new problem on a new machine the same thing happens and for the same reason.” She finally understood and never made a older comparison to me again.

They had one very fast verifier operator and knowing that I was fairly new man she would put up with problems on her machine because her machine had a light touch ( fast ) and she was afraid that I make it sluggish. By that time I had figured out that a machine with a light touch had fewer calls, not necessary fewer problems because the operator will tolerate a minor problem on a really fast machine. Finally her verifier stopped working completely and she had to let the rookie work on it. A keypunch or verifier machine operation required a series of things to happen sequentially on each key stroke, any one operation being slow would cause the machine to feel ‘sluggish.* By then I had learned a number of extra things that made a machine work faster and applied them all to her machine before I returned it to her. About one half hour later she asked me what I had done to her machine. I told her what I had done to repair it and went on saying “I thought it was rather sluggish ( Not really ) so I did a tuneup on it.” She said that is great because it had never worked so well before. I knew that if I could make a machine that got that response from her “I had arrived.”

Before the days that every field machine had a parts catalog I was talking to our office parts man on the phone. There was a 407 that I had made temporary repair and I was making certain that the part that I was ordering was the one that I needed. Each of the men operators would come over to the machine press stop fan the cards, readjusted the carriage then restarted the machine. Then another operator would do the same thing. I thought “if there is something wrong with that 407 I wish the would tell me.” Then I noticed that they were looking elsewhere and not at the machine. I followed their gaze to see the real reason they were doing that. A lovely young strawberry blond was at the desk of the head keypunch operator going over some papers. She was bending way over while wearing a loose fitting dress with what was then called an Outlaw neck line ( very low and loose fitting ). She was showing off her great tan and it was visible from her forehead all the way to her belt line and it was all perfectly visible and very even. I was in the best place for the view because I was there before she came in. Suddenly I was having a problem talking and making sense so I told the parts man that I will call back later. I hung up the phone, then dialed a partial number to keep the phone from ringing and watched.

All IBM 519's had a device that could print on one end of a card up to nine numbers on one line or the other. What printed was under the control of the wiring of the control panel. One day one of the operators handed me a card and said that the end-printer was printing incorrectly. I could see nothing there and I said “don*t you mean not printing at all.” He repeated his statement and escorted me over to a dark closet then turned on a UV lamp. Then I then could see the error in the glowing number. They were using invisible ink. The ribbon in the machine looked like a strip of oily white cloth. By the time I finished the repair my hands were glowing under the lamp as much as the printing.

They had started this system because tires were turning up missing somewhere in the plant. At each stage an inspector should count the number of tires in a batch and write it on the card under the printed numbers. He could see the original number printed on the card and he got to estimating the count instead of actually counting. Because there were certain defects that would cause tires to be rejected the number of tires in each batch would often decrease.

The day when the invisible numbers started coming out there was flurry of calls wanting to know how many tires should be in each batch. They were told to “just count them.” They then asked “how will we know how many there should be, and how many were they were to count, and how will we know if we are right?” The reply was “Just count them all and we will tell you if they are correct or not.” Shortly there was noted of occasion a sharp drop in the number of tires in one general area. A lookout room was built in the rafters over that department to watch them. From the high perch they saw a trash truck stopping out or normal sight of the floor level people. They layered the bottom of bed with tires and filled the top with trash. All this with a camera rolling featuring them. A undercover police car followed the truck to a warehouse with many stolen tires in it. The system of invisible numbers worked so well that they continued using it. I remember innocently saying once to another C.E. they used invisible ink to print on their 519. I had to explain the process and reason to him.

I was describing something about a TV repair to a machine operator there. At one point I said “that capacitor will have a high voltage charge so be careful and do not touch the terminals.” He piped up saying that “No! as soon as a capacitor is removed from a circuit or the power is turned off it immediately becomes inert without any charge.” I set up a demonstration using a large value capacitor ( 8,000 mf @ 48V ) to blow up a small diameter wire after the capacitor had been charged from a machine by meter leads. I removed the leads from the machine, and using other leads I placed them on the charged capacitor, the small wire exploded into vapor from the heavy charge in the capacitor. He was amazed, but then he believed me.

One keypunch operator as I came in said that most of the star-wheels had been knocked off her machine and could I quickly fix it. I took off the cover looking for the missing parts. She said “No I found them and put them in my coffee cup and ! ! ! Oh my god I drank them. . . .” I told her that “IBM hardened the wheels in a bath of molten potassium cyanide a highly poisonous compound.” She was concerned, and I did not tell her that none of the compound remained on the parts. Later on IBM stationary I had our office secretary type up a phoney invoice billing her personally for the parts. It was placed on the counter top of her machine by the lady that delivered internal company mail. We were all watching as she came unglued when she read the invoice.

Once when I was looking in the base of a keypunch I saw a greasy ten dollar bill lying there. I kidded the operator and asked her if it was ok if I kept any greasy old ten dollar bills I found in her machine. She was laughing also and said that it was ok for me to keep it. I went over and got a paper towel and picked it up and thanked her profusely. When she saw the $10.00 bill and realized that I was not really joking she changed her tune and wanted it back. We argued back and forth for a while till the woman at the next machine pointed out that was probably the money she had accused her husband of taking from her purse. It had apparently fallen out and slid in her machine and landed in the grease. I made her promise that if she would apologize to her ‘poor husband’ I would give it back. She promised so I gave it back.

I volunteered to repair a special ( one of a kind ) Braille printing machine controller made from a modified IBM 056 verifier. Prior to the controller the brail writer has two sets of three keys plus a central space bar. Three keys for each hand. A brail character was made from a combination of six raised dots. The keys were one key for each dot. The top left dot was number 1 below it was dot number two, then dot three, the top right dot was number 4 and so on. There were many rules for brail printing but the operator was relieved from knowing that to print a ‘n* you pressed the keyboard ‘n* and not keys 1, 3, 4. and 5. The machine translated for you

Most of the 056 was connected to the Braille writing machine. Normally the Braille machine had seven keys three for each hand and a space bar. The operator needed to know the complicated rules for Braille writing and needed to press the proper keys for each character. The machine was in a private residence and had been modified by an IBM engineer from the San Jose plant. The brother of the lady that lived in the house. With the new setup the training for an new operator was much less and many more could volunteer as a typist. The basic machine had been donated by IBM. The output was small indentations in a thin folded zinc alloy plate. It could be written on both sides by turning it over. The holder was made so that the reversal offset the dot areas and allowed double sided brail. The finished plate could then have a sheet of special paper placed in the fold and run through soft rubber rollers. The paper would then have the data impressed on it and could be read on both sides making a Braille documents smaller by having both side with text on it. Also multiple sheets could be run from the same plate. That machine location had five times the output of other similar machines without the controller.

It was great coming there because I was a volunteer and she took extra care for my comfort. She always had a fresh batch of my favorite cookies or pie and a hot cup of coffee waiting. Not all of the 056 was used and the designer gave me the remainder to turn in to the parts department. I gave them to our parts man saying that I could not repair the machine so I was secretly removing it from the customer’s office one small section at a time. He did not know what to think.

Bank Problems

In Pico where I lived there was only a small community bank. It was the same one my father used and we were both Howard Oels. Many times they took my pay check and placed in it dad*s business account or they would take the amount dad payed his suppliers from my account ( usually a substantial amount ) and it was always against me. Any number of times I had checks returned for insufficient funds. Not one occurrence was a true failure in my account. It got so that when a teller saw my wife or myself they would make way toward the back room because we were usually so mad. To settle the problem permanently I finally changed banks.

Later I was trained on a bank proof machine. That bank had one. I was taking my first call on it when a teller saw me and hastily fled to the back room. I followed her there and she nearly panicked. Once by looking deep inside that machine I found a loose check. They said “so that where it went. We turned this place upside down looking for it months ago.”

In another bank in Whittier I arrived in the morning before the bank was open, the tellers were all there. The guard did not know me and said “What do you want?” I said I am from IBM and I am here to repair your bank proof machine, where is it. He pointed toward the back of the building. I asked a lady there where it was and she took me there. Just as I was setting my tools down a cart piled high with the money for the tellers was removed from the vault and placed beside the machine. I followed the lady back up front and she wondered why. I said “because of the cart with the money.” She said “you are from IBM and we trust you.” I replied “How do you know that I am from IBM did you see a ID card. Have you ever seen me before?” Finally someone moved the cart so I would work there. Later my boss said. “You did the correct thing.” The following is the reasoning for my actions.

By My Sister Faye

Where: Whittier California. A Department store ( Myers )

When: About 40 odd years ago

Time: Mid morning

All the sales clerks at the end of there day they would put there money in a cloth bag, and were turned in to the cashier. The next morning the cashier would count the money and make sure they balanced. Then she would make a bank deposit. The cashier and the credit department were next to each other with only a door to separate them. The door to the cashier was open most of the time.

This one morning a man came to the credit department and said he was a repair man and had come to fix the machine. In an offic