Identifying the “Early IBM Computer” in a Twitter Photo | Hacker News Reader

Identifying the “Early IBM Computer” in a Twitter Photo

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These would have been the kind of machines that IBM sold to Nazi Germany and configured for use by the concentration camps, right? I didn't realise the technology was so sophisticated.

I don't know why you're being downvoted - IBM did, in fact, custom make and sell tabulators to the Nazis[0]. The Holocaust might not have been possible at the scale or efficiency with which it was undertaken without the force multiplier of IBM computational and processing power.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Interesting, but I think it also shows the neutrality of the company --- they would sell to anyone, regardless of what their technology was being used for.

A stark contrast to the actions taken by Cloudflare's CEO[1], incidentally also involving Nazis.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031922

There is no 'neutral' in genocide.

No middle ground.

Is there any evidence that IBM knew that it was enabling genocide? It was selling to Germany, certainly. But the US didn't officially enter the war until Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Also, the Nazis weren't just collecting data on Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc. They collected data on everyone. It was arguably essential for resource management for the war effort.

IBM advertised directly to the GAP(Nazi party) product designed to architect genocide

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_image.cfm?image_id=1...

CEO even got a medal for "service to the Reich", from Hitler himself, while visiting Berlin ...

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ibm-and-quot-death-s-cal...

Well, that ad reminds me far too much of the NSA:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nothing_is_beyond_ou...

But yes, that Jewish Virtual Library cite is damning. It does seem that IBM knowingly aided genocide.

Bear in mind that the resources the Nazis were managing included shells made by slaves from Auschwitz and soap made from people killed in Birkenau. There’s no dividing line between the Nazi war machine and their atrocities.

Yes, of course :(

But if IBM sold the gear long enough before it was clear that the Nazis were doing that, IBM arguably isn't at fault. And if they did, they are.

Notwithstanding Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation, it's my understanding that all suits against IBM over this have been dismissed or withdrawn.

There was not much difference between optimising bombing runs over tokyo (in terms of "target damage" per "input dollar" say) and other war crimes for the people affected, what's your point? Sure I guess operations research is a war crime?

Having read IBM and the Holocaust, I'm not convinced that IBM actually had a clear idea of how the machines would be used until quite late in the war effort, at least until well after 1941.

Yeah but as far as corporate image risk goes, what are the odds that one of your clients will be invaded by two countries 10 years later, and that the ONE (of typically several) political party that approved your contract will be relevant at all?

PRETTY SLIM

You never know what a political party is going to actually do. You could attend all the furthest spectrum events and hear some twisted things and not expect any of it to actually happen.

Its not a factor.

"Oh I'm not going to take this lucrative government contract because one political party is disenfranchising 0.75% of the population and my time machine says they are going to make concentration camps, and two countries are going to invade them and leak all the state secrets and onlookers on the ... internet (was ist dis?)... are going to vilify us"

>1) the state of not supporting or helping either side in a conflict, disagreement, etc.; impartiality.

>2) absence of decided views, expression, or strong feeling.

One wonders how you define neutrality.

I suspect the OP is saying that there is no room for neutrality in genocide. That an "absence of decided views" over the extermination of a race is not actually a viable position for any human being to take.

Either that, or it’s just an emotional outburst.

Meanwhile, in the course of history, humans regularly engage in mass slaughter of humans.

We could say indifference to genocide is not viable, because it ought not be viable. But that has its problems: if we convince each other that we are incapable of evil, perhaps we won’t be vigilant enough to see the signs in time.

That is precisely what I was saying. Thanks for clarifying.

That's a much more reasonable interpretation than the one I made.

> 1) the state of not supporting or helping either side in a conflict, disagreement, etc.; impartiality.

...But they did support the Nazis.

Neutrality is an illusion when it comes to man made constructs. An earthquake is neutral; executives in a company deliberately choosing to make a profit by selling things which will be used to commit crimes against humanity is certainly not.

Read the link:

”Willy Heidinger, who remained in control of Dehomag, the 90%-owned German subsidiary of IBM, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Hitler regime.”

Would you argue that this is what neutrality looks like?

What does profit have to do with it? Would it be better, ethically, if they sold it at a loss?

Neutrality at the expense of others isn't neutral.

You must be confused about what neutrality actually means.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Desmond Tutu

I’ll happily describe myself as as confused as Desmond Tutu.

It wasn’t widely known what was happening behind the scenes until the Soviets started to take back the east.

Exactly. Thank you.

> Interesting, but I think it also shows the neutrality of the company --- they would sell to anyone, regardless of what their technology was being used for.

You sound like you think that's a good thing.

This is an utterly peculiar statement. It’s phrased in a way that suggests you think enabling concentration camps is a superior moral choice to refusing to do business with Nazis.

If that’s not what you meant, I’d strongly consider choosing your words more carefully.

Pecunia non olet.

I haven't really looked into the punched card machines that IBM (or at least IBM's German subsidiary) rented to Nazi Germany. But yes, these were the same IBM 405 punched card accounting machines as the photo I examined (along with keypunches, sorters, and other punched card machinery).

Refs: https://archive.org/details/IbmAndTheHolocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_during_World_War_II

Though Nazi German had IBM equipment I don't think they were installed in concentration camps

More in their strategic command or some other central agency

Somehow I really want to hear what these machines sound like. It would be great to have an audio engineer make some good quality sound recordings of one of these machines. The pictures just aren't enough for me.

The mainframe server room I used to frequent was pretty loud, loud enough that you had to get close to someone and raise your voice to be heard. The worst racket was made by the line printers, and even if the ambient noise really was quite bad those were still encaged in their own sound-proof enclosure.

Not an environment you want to spend a whole lot of time in.

Well I wouldn't want one of these 405's in my bedroom, but I realize that I do even miss hearing the sound of my harddrive clicking away. It makes me feel like something real is happening.

Do you remember the scene in "the day after" when all the shit is going down, and the clatter and buzzing of the teletype machines...? Just so terrifying with all those sounds.

One could imagine that IBM could have failed to make the transition from analog machines like this to digital computers, yet they didn't. Meanwhile, other companies such as Kodak failed to capitialize on the analog to digital transiton. Was it just a difference in executive leadership?

Aren't these machines also digital? I see discrete notches in the counter wheels, and I can't imagine accountants accepting analog noise in their results. Digital doesn't have to mean binary.

One common explanation is that there simply wasn't enough money in digital photography to sustain a company like Kodak, because people didn't need supplies like film anymore. Meanwhile the computing revolution expanded the market for IBM's products and the amount they could charge for them, at least in the short term.

One reason IBM could make the transition from electromechanical (not analog) systems to programmable computers is that it wasn't really a disruptive change to their business model or to their customers. They were still renting out punched-card business machines. On the other hand, the switch to digital cameras totally messed up Kodak's film-based business model.

Another factor is that both Thomas Watson Sr. and Jr. were very strong, effective leaders for IBM (based on what I've read and heard).

Kodak made the transition too late, that’s the reason.

It was a bit hard for me to extract if he identified the machine, but it's there:

  Thus, although the machine in the photos is very similar to the IBM 403, it's not an exact match.

  After more research into IBM's various accounting machines, I conclude that machine in the photos is the IBM 405, an IBM accounting machine introduced in 1934 (earlier than that 1948 IBM 403 despite the larger model number).4 The IBM 405 (below) had curved legs that match the Abbott photos. In addition, the 405 has a narrower main cabinet than the 403, with bulky additional components attached to the left and right, outside the legs. This matches the narrower cabinet in the Abbott photos. (The 403 was an improved and modernized 405, explaining the overall similarity between the two machines.)

It's in the title of the page too:

    Identifying the "Early IBM Computer" in a Twitter photo: a 405 Accounting Machine

...which confused me a bit, because at first he said he thought it was a 403.

I was originally going for drama and suspense about what the machine was, but maybe writing that way didn't work as well as I hoped.

It was a good write up, don't be too hard on yourself :)

It really didn't.

The article has not elaborated or hinted the impact of punch card to computing. Those horrible cobol, fortran, 360/70 assembler and jcl ... those field, zone, continuation ...

I have fond memories of programming with punched cards in the 60's and 70's. Assembler was a magic communion with the hardware. FORTRAN captured mathematical beauty. COBOL was powerful. It's all relative.

IBM gave me an original plugboard as seen in the foto.

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