German museum of early IBM hardware a labor of love
A remarkable collection of early IBM hardware makes its home in Sindelfingen, a small town near Stuttgart, Germany. And it isn't elves from the neighboring Black Forest that assemble and maintain the collection, but rather retired IBM engineers.
Herman Hollerith's automatic sorter
The museum, Haus zur Geschichte der IBM Datenverarbeitung, or the House of the History of IBM Data Processing, has equipment dating back 100 years. And, thanks to the patient and skilled hands of the retired IBMers who devoted thousands of hours to the restoration, much of the equipment works.
Dr. James W. Cortada, a leading historian of computing who works in the IBM Institute for Business Value, says the museum offers "one of the great European collections of Industrial Age high-tech equipment, and the most important for computers in Europe."
One of the stars of the show is ersatz, to use the German word. It's a handmade replica of Herman Hollerith's first tabulating machine, and the only replica in the collection. (There are only two originals of the machine in the world.)
In the late 19th Century, the US was swelling with immigrant population, and census methods weren't up to the task of measuring the sudden growth. In fact, it took seven years to tabulate the results of the 1880 census.
Hollerith's perforator from 1890 (from the Museum web site)
Enter Hollerith, son of a German immigrant and Census Bureau statistician. His Punch Card Tabulating Machine used an electric current to sense holes in punched cards and keep a running total of data. With it, he won a contest sponsored by the Census Bureau and in 1896 founded the Tabulating Machine Company, one of the precursors of IBM,. His company also worked with the New York Central Railroad, supplying punched-card equipment to process up to 4 million waybills.
The ties to Germany weren't long in coming. Industrialist Willy Heidinger founded the Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (DEHOMAG) in 1910 Berlin, with Hollerith's representative in attendance. The foundation covered the rights of production and selling products in Germany and Southeast Europe. Also, the 1910 census used Hollerith Electric Tabulating Systems to tabulate the count for four German counties.
That pride in Germany's early role was perhaps part of the modern motivation for former IBMers Franz Schiffer and Heinz Graichen, who spent more than 2,000 hours to make the fully functional Hollerith replica. Schiffer handled the woodworking chores, while Graichen took on the electromechanical part.
The highly respected collection comprises many other devices, including a 1948 Model 604 electronic calculator, a couple of S/360s and all sorts of peripherals. There's nothing newer than the 1990s, however.
It's the operational artifacts that provide the thrill for some visitors. Van Snyder, who works at NASA, said he particularly enjoyed operating a 1401 data processing system.
"The first paying job I had after college, in 1966, was operating a 1401," he said.
IBM pays for the museum's electricity and maintenance, but volunteers provide all of the staffing.
The first 20 of Herman Hollerith's automatic sorters arrived at the U.S. Census Office in October 1901. The horizontal units were equipped to sense the hole position in a card by activating a magnet, so that the card, which traveled through the machine on a belt, was steered by a guide channel into a particular pocket. The machine could sort cards into any of 12 pockets. Though crude by modern standards, the sorters nevertheless bear a distinct resemblance to those used to sort bank checks today. (IBM corporate archives)