My first IBM Machine 082 card sorter
Enlisted US Army "Machine accountants" school Feb 1959 so I could learn IBM machines.
Got the school, maxed the class, never looked back.
Spent three years in Germany learning all I could about every IBM machine I could put my hands on. Card Sorters 081, 082, 083, Card collators 076, 077, Card Interpreters 055, 056, 057, Tabulators 402, 403, 407, Reproducing card punch 514, Summary Punch 519, Calculators 602A, 650, 609, Computer 705, Key punchs, 024, 026, Key verifier 056.
Most funnest, enjoyable, make-it-sing-machine capable of doing whatever management wanted was the IBM 1401 computer. This is likely the single machine I truly mastered in my carrer, and I loved it. First 1401 I programmed had 8000 chars of memory with card reader, card punch, line printer. Next upgrade was a 1401 with 16,000 chars of memory, card reader, card punch, printer, 4 tape drives, 2 disk drives. There was not a task we couldn't do with that machine including determining "best wire pinning paths" to wire the XLO Bryant high performance disk drives that would eventually compete with the disk drives on the IBM System/360.
