IBM's card manufacturing plant in Greencastle, Ind., was officially dedicated on October 30, 1954. The wide expanse of glass that completely encircled the plant's 184,000 square feet of floor space provided interior lighting relatively unknown in the majority of contemporary industrial buildings. Above the windows were 7,400 glass bricks to filter still more light to the interior. At its dedication, the facility had two 420-ton air conditioning machines and more than 19,300 feet of florescent tubing to provide artificial lighting. To supplement the building-wide air conditioning system, the structure was topped by a ponded roof, which, covered with three inches of water in the summer, served as an insulator.
In May 1962, Greencastle manufactured and shipped more products per day than any other IBM plant -- a daily average of hundreds of shipments and more than two million pounds of products sent to customers across the United States.