saundby
Experienced Member
Here's what I recall seeing in banks at the time:
Tellers did not have terminals at their windows. Behind the counter would be 1 or 2 typewriters for updating passbooks, usually IBM Executives, Selectrics, or Selectric IIs. A small branch may have 1 or 2 CRT terminals if the bank did anything beyond batch processing, often 1 in a back room behind the counter where it was not visible to customers, sometimes a second elsewhere, like the accounts manager or loan manager's desk. Loan managers found them great intimidation devices when selling loans. A teleprinter might live in the back, too, often in a soundproofed box. The bank manager's desk would not have had a terminal, nor any other business machines aside from an impressive multi-line phone and possibly an intercom if the phone didn't have that function. It would demean his position to have anything else--calculators, terminals, and typewriters belonged elsewhere, where the worker bees were. He might ask for the teleprinter's box to be opened so that the sound of it would fill the bank to impress someone, however.
Larger branches would have a couple more terminals, perhaps, and possibly tty's in rooms where the sound wouldn't reach the customers. The computers themselves were elsewhere, where the customers weren't, reached over leased lines. A data mux
might live on a shelf near the leased line heads, usually with the phone line punchboard (and patchboard, if present.)
As a teenager I worked as a disk-pack and data cable monkey for a couple of financial institutions during summers in the mid-seventies.
Tellers did not have terminals at their windows. Behind the counter would be 1 or 2 typewriters for updating passbooks, usually IBM Executives, Selectrics, or Selectric IIs. A small branch may have 1 or 2 CRT terminals if the bank did anything beyond batch processing, often 1 in a back room behind the counter where it was not visible to customers, sometimes a second elsewhere, like the accounts manager or loan manager's desk. Loan managers found them great intimidation devices when selling loans. A teleprinter might live in the back, too, often in a soundproofed box. The bank manager's desk would not have had a terminal, nor any other business machines aside from an impressive multi-line phone and possibly an intercom if the phone didn't have that function. It would demean his position to have anything else--calculators, terminals, and typewriters belonged elsewhere, where the worker bees were. He might ask for the teleprinter's box to be opened so that the sound of it would fill the bank to impress someone, however.
Larger branches would have a couple more terminals, perhaps, and possibly tty's in rooms where the sound wouldn't reach the customers. The computers themselves were elsewhere, where the customers weren't, reached over leased lines. A data mux
might live on a shelf near the leased line heads, usually with the phone line punchboard (and patchboard, if present.)
As a teenager I worked as a disk-pack and data cable monkey for a couple of financial institutions during summers in the mid-seventies.
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