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UNIVAC, IBM, Westinghouse manuals

dreddnott

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 4, 2006
Messages
318
Location
Hesperia, California, USA
Somewhere in my stash I have quite a bit of documentation for old, old, old systems. Currently I can only find the generic IBM user manual for their office machines (1959!) but I know I have the others safely tucked away somewhere. They got misplaced (in my mind at least) when my schizophrenic aunt moved into the old music room.

I also have many, many flowchart stencils and templates that were used in the development of the programs that ran on those old mainframes.

Gifts from my grandfather and I don't intend on selling them but if there's ANY interest at all I can scan and/or transcribe the text and images. I'll post a full list when I find where they're hiding (a box in the garage is most likely).
 
I have some photos I took recently of UNIVAC sales and marketing documentation that you might enjoy, I am currently PDFing, should have it avaliable in a few days.

Jason
 
I'm reporting in to say that I have rediscovered my grandfather's old books, in great condition too!

1. IBM Reference Manual - 1401 Data Processing System (Major Revision, September 1961)

2. Burroughs B 2500 and B 3500 Systems Reference Manual (1966)

3. Specifications - UNIVAC File Computer System Model 1 - Central Computer and General Storage System (1958)

4. Westinghouse Proprietary 2 - Proceedings of the Westinghouse Software Symposium
February 7 and 8, 1967
Research and Development Center
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15235
Research Report 67-1C4-COMP-R9

This book is huge and has a great selection of writings on programming tricks and innovations, including my grandfather's method for automatically translating SPS to COBOL (for easier migration from IBM 1401 to Burroughs 2500 series).

I'm pretty sure that the IBM 1401 manual at least is already available on the internet, but I'm not sure about the others.
 
Oooohhh! Documentation like this needs to be preserved in any event--if for no other reason than to provide definitive reference points when researching older machines. Please do scan them. Probably your best bet with larger objects is to find one of those large office photocopiers with scan to e-mail capability and feed them into PDFs that way. I've input several thousand pages of documentation for TI systems that way.
 
Fortunately for me, the Computer History Museum seems to already have my specific Burroughs, IBM, and UNIVAC manuals. The Westinghouse proceedings, due to my grandfather's contributions, have sentimental value. I could scan the book but I wouldn't have the heart to donate it.
 
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