Miniature 1959 IBM 1401 Console handmade polystyrene scratch build

Given how small-scale it is, maybe he could opt for lights/LEDs and an ac motor to rotate the tapes.

The IBM 1401 emulator we use is ROPE: http://ibm-1401.info/#1401-Software

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA does demos of the real 1401 (at least until the coronavirus hit), so once things open up again, anyone who is nearby should check it out.

Have you seen this replica of Cray 1A? http://www.chrisfenton.com/homebrew-cray-1a/

Practice.

I think I would call it focus instead of patience. It's often useful to have a goal that is motivating.

Trick your brain into thinking you'll get a big reward upon finishing the project.

Daughter is an architect. She's been doing origami since early kidhood, and I marvel at the intricacy of the models she now handcrafts. Point being, like anything, the art of patience takes... practice. Tons of practice.

The chair has its own series of images: https://imgur.com/gallery/TymP8M5

It probably falls under the broad umbrella of Mid-Century Modern, but if you mean the machinery more specifically, i don't know. It's a little too grounded to be atompunk or streamline moderne, and a little too early to be cassette futurism.

IBM put a lot of work into a detailed corporate design aesthetic. Itis described in detail in the book "The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design". The design principles were developed by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr (whose father owned Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater), and they were developed by Eliot Noyes, a notable industrial designer.

Some design concepts in the computers were recessed pedestals for a feeling of floating and lightness, the concealment of most of the circuitry, expressing the "inherent drama" of computers, the carefully controlled color scheme, and modern materials for the cabinets. The tape drives in particular were wildly successful at expressing the "inherent drama" of computing, to the point that spinning tape drives became a movie cliche .

It's the 1407 Console Inquiry Station, pictured and described on p. 29 here:

IBM 1401 System Summary, Sept 1964. http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/1401/A24-1401-1_1...

Autocoder (macro assembler) was the main 1401 language.

Here's a video of Fortran running on the IBM 1401 at the Computer History Museum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFQ3sajIdaM

Because memory was so limited (8000 words), the Fortran compiler operates in 63 phases, where each phase consists of 150 to 300 instructions. In other words, the compiler's code was broken into chunks of 150-300 instructions, and that's all that could run in a phase.

I'll also mention that memory was 8000 words and not 8192 words, because the IBM 1401 used decimal arithmetic.