Projects and Activities of the IPSJ Computer History Committee - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 56

Taking this opportunity, the Magazine of the Society started a more or less short
series of articles to analyze those unfamiliar computers. The first article was devoted
to the analogue simultaneous linear equations solver, that is presently displayed at the
National Science Museum.
This is the only surviving machine of the family. The original machine was con-
structed at MIT around 1936 by John B. Wilbur based on the ingenious idea of Wil-
liam Tomson far back in 1878.
In the next article, the pinwheel mechanism and related technologies of the Tiger
Brand mechanical calculator developed in 1923 in Japan were described.
The third article discussed the Kawaguchi style tabulation machine, which is dis-
played at the Statistical Research and Training Institute, Statistics Bureau. In one
sense, the machine is similar to the Hollerith tabulator. However, Ichitaro Kawaguchi
installed various unique ideas to his machine. For instance, it has card bins to catch
the falling cards from the sensor station placed on the top of the towery box.
The last article of the series will treat Yazu's mechanical calculator. Although the
adder employs the standard Odhner type mechanism, the pin action of Yazu's ma-
chine is unexpected, moving left and right to engage and disengage with the wheels.
In place of the multiplier register, it has the reverse rotating rod to decrease the multi-
plier from the product register.
The Committee hopes that, through these articles, the unique and interesting
aspects of these historical machines may be exposed to the wider computer society.
The current series consists of four articles altogether, of which the first one
appeared in September 2009. The last article will come out in March 2010.
9 Demos and Symposia
In this section, historical events which occurred outside of the Committee, but inside
of the Society are summarized.
Taking the opportunity presented by the IPSJ Annual Congress, demonstrations of
the old machines were held twice. The demo area was in a corner of the Congress and
a small number of the old heroic machines or their components were displayed. Un-
fortunately, old computers were, needless to say, gigantic, and hard to transport. So
sometimes only a picture panel was shown instead. They were quite enough to give
the audience a feel of the deep impact and impression of these classic relics.
IPSJ operates a long sequence of Programming Symposia; in fact the first sympo-
sium was held in January 1960, shortly before the founding of IPSJ. These regular
symposia are held in January with no restrictions on the topics. On the other hand, in
summer, minor but intensive symposia are held on specific subjects.
In one special symposium, papers concentrated on computer history were solic-
ited. The contributed papers can be seen on the Virtual Computer Museum web
pages.
At its 40th symposium, Professor S. Okoma was invited as the guest speaker.
Being one of the computer historians, he gave a talk on the current status of computer
history research.