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help-wanted fare. Promising the usual “exciting new jobs” in a “new
and dynamic fi eld,” they sought out candidates for a series of positions
in programming research. That particularly promising candidates might
be those who “enjoy algebra, geometry and other logical operations”
was also not remarkable, given the context. What caught the eye of the
“Talk of the Town” columnists, however, was the curious addition of
an appeal to candidates who enjoyed “musical composition and arrange-
ment,” liked “chess, bridge or anagrams,” or simply possessed “a lively
imagination.”
2
Struck by the incongruity between these seemingly differ-
ent pools of potential applicants, one technical and the other artistic, the
columnists themselves “made bold to apply” to the IBM manager in
charge of programmer recruitment. “Not that we wanted a programming
job, we told him; we just wondered if anyone else did.”
3
The IBM manager they spoke to was Robert W. Bemer, a “fast-
talking, sandy-haired man of about thirty-fi ve,” who by virtue of his
eight-years experience was already considered, in the fast-paced world
of electronic computing, “an old man with a long beard.” It was from
Bemer that they learned of the fi fteen thousand existing computer pro-
grammers. An experienced programmer himself, Bemer nevertheless
confessed astonishment at the unforeseen explosion into being of a
programming profession, which even to him seemed to have “happened
overnight.” And for the immediate future, at least, it appeared inevitable
Figure 3.1
IBM Advertisement,
New York Times
, May 31, 1969.
