News Item:Rebuilding the IBM 1401

I found an article provided by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (a international non-profit organization). The headline of the article "Rebuilding the IBM 1401" by Philip E. Ross ( November 2009) states that a gang of veteran engineers breathes new life into the hulk of an old IBM 1401 computer.

The article mentions the love this gang of engineers have for the "old school" computer and their desire to make the vintage computer work at the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, Calif. A reason for restoring the computer is because unlike the new modern computers, the IBM 1401 is mechanical and you can actually see how it works. ""It's a mechanical machine: The tape machine has an air sensor, a little rubber diaphragm with contacts on it, and you can see it work. With these modern computers, it's just magic—they've got things a few nanometers long, and you'll never see them" says an engineer who worked on the restoration.

Some random facts about the computer is that it was mostly used to sort things in were usually used in the areas of accounting, payroll, transaction analysis, and inventory control. "It was also a simple and inexpensive machine that processed numbers in decimal rather than binary form and accepted numbers of varying digit spans" (Ross, P) Another random fact is that companies would lease the computer for $6500 a month, which would be worth $45,000 today. Finally, the IBM 1401 is also known for appearing in the movie Dr. Strangelove (1964).

Engineers continue to work on another IBM 1401 that was recently purchase and they encourage other engineers to come to the Computer History Museum to work on these computers. "The museum can always throw more iron into the pot. "

Here is the link for a slide show provided by IEEE: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/slideshow/computing/hardware/the-rebirth-of-the-ibm-1401-computer