
Restoring the IBM 1401 - cyberviewer
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/restoring-the-ibm-1401/
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dmoo
Slight tangent but check out ibm 1401, a user´s manual jóhann jóhannsson

[http://open.spotify.com/album/3ZqqvWwHzoVCxwdsaUaF9z](http://open.spotify.com/album/3ZqqvWwHzoVCxwdsaUaF9z)

Inspired by a recording of an IBM mainframe computer which Jóhann’s father,
Jóhann Gunnarsson, made on a reel-to-reel tape machine more than 30 years ago,
the piece was originally written to be performed by a string quartet as the
accompaniment to a dance piece by the choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir. For the
album version, Jóhann rewrote the entire score, and it was recorded by a
sixty-piece string orchestra. He also added a new final section and
incorporated electronics alongside those original tape recordings of the
singing computer.

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beloch
The IBM 1400 series is pretty significant in the history of computers and the
1401 was the first of it's line. So why are there so few out there?

Simply put, the average IBM 1401 is comprised of roughly five tonnes of gold-
rich salvage material that hit the market at a time when old "new" stuff was
basically worthless. Yes, antique chairs and china had value then, but not
obsolete technology, records, or film. This was a time before VHS, mass market
home video, and the notion that old celluloid was anything besides junk. The
only surviving copy of Dreyer's cut of "La passion de Jeanne d'Arc" was
sitting in closet in a mental institution in Oslo. This was a tough time to be
an inconveniently large hunk rich in precious metals!

Laboriously scraping the gold off of connectors etc. is obviously a lot of
work. That's not how the pro's did things. We're talking chemical baths,
electroplating, you name it. I once had a prof who moonlighted as a computer
salvager in the 80's. He admitted to being the final death of many large
mainframes, including 1401's, that he dearly wished he could have saved if
he'd known then what he knows now (or did at the time I took his course)!

The worthless becomes the precious. Maybe people with hoarding disorders are
saner than we think! (Looking around me, I might have a touch of that
myself...)

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jf
Part of why I love the IBM 1401 is because of how mechanical it is. So much of
what the computer does is done in hardware. You can see and feel the machine
running.

If you are able, I highly recommend visiting the 1401 exhibit at the Computer
History Museum: [http://ibm-1401.info/#how-to-
visit](http://ibm-1401.info/#how-to-visit)

The "ibm-1401.info" site is maintained by the IBM 1401 restoration team. It
contains nearly everything you'd ever want to know about the machine. It's a
pretty dense website, so I suggest visiting these links first:

[http://ibm-1401.info/1401GuidePosterV9.html](http://ibm-1401.info/1401GuidePosterV9.html)
[http://ibm-1401.info/IBM1401_IEEE_SSCS_Mag_Jan2010-100DPI.pd...](http://ibm-1401.info/IBM1401_IEEE_SSCS_Mag_Jan2010-100DPI.pdf)

I also really enjoyed learning how to program the 1401. I wrote instructions
on how write a "Hello world" in the the "ROPE" simulator environment:
[https://github.com/jpf/ROPE](https://github.com/jpf/ROPE)

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jgalt212
Per his tweets, Paul Graham seems very fond of this machine.

The IBM 1401 seems so primitive that it's strange to think that programming
has felt continuous since then, but it has.

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522587988451024896](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522587988451024896)

Hearing the fabric-tearing sound of the 1401's brutally powerful printers took
me right back. Can't believe only 2 1401s left.

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522584973614673921](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522584973614673921)

@alexia The first computer I programmed was a 1401.

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522474545073385476](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/522474545073385476)

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MaysonL
Back in the day, I wrote a few machine language programs for that beast
directly at the keypunch, including a one-card card deck duplication program.

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kyberias
I wished to see more detailed pictures. This was funny:

"Back in its era, it’s reported that 1401s ran for over six months before
needing service."

~~~
jf
You can find more pictures here:
[http://ibm-1401.info/](http://ibm-1401.info/) and also by searching the
Computer History Museum's collection catalog:
[http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/?s=1401](http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/search/?s=1401)

