Ypsilanti City Council Faces Crucial Technological Upgrade

Kind readers, you all know the city budget is tighter than wet lederhosen on a prize hog (coining a phrase, there). As taxpayers, would you feel comfortable at this perilous juncture with a $721,000 outlay for dubious new technology? One that had never been tested or used before, and which would eliminate several city jobs staffed by neighbors and friends...assuming the darn thing worked?

That was the choice that faced the City Council in May of 1973 as the city pondered whether to buy...its first computer.

The IBM "System 3" was an enormous hulk of a thing that used a punchcard system. It promised to provide a modest speed-up in Ypsilanti's processing of voter information and several other tabulation-type tasks. It was really just a glorified Babbage machine with an electric plug. The "System 3" was introduced in 1969 and discontinued the year I graduated high school and is already collected in historical museums (pass the Geritol).

"Ypsilanti's City Hall may soon enter the electronics age," announced the May 15, 1973 Ypsi Press story by Barney White headlined "Computer Proposed for City."

"At Monday Night's budget hearing, city council heard a presentation from IBM representative Ann Olson, who suggested the city purchase a $151,000 [$721,000 in today's greenbacks] "System 3" computer.

"Describing the device as in the 'small to medium size range,' Ms. Olson said a number of municipalities, including Westland and Dearborn, have converted their business operations to computer systems.


"Presently, most city hall functions are performed by hand, though some, such as tax billing, are 'farmed out' to conputer concerns.

"The presentation follows several months' study by city officials, according to City Manager Peter Caputo.

"The computer cost, plus the approximately $12,000 salary of a full-time 'data processing coordinator,' would be paid from the city's federal revenue-sharing funds.

"According to Ms. Olson, purchase of the System 3 could save the city nearly $40,000 over a five-year period compared with costs under a lease arrangement.

"The System 3, she continued, can, among other things, perform 38,000 six-digit additions a second, process 25 checks a minute or 1,000 new voters in 20 minutes."

"Currently, it's about 10 minutes per new voter," Ms. Olson said, "that's a mammoth job and we can do it in 20 minutes."

When Dusty Diary's husband, a Java programmer, heard the figure of '38,000,' he chuckled. "Do you know how many operations per second a computer can handle nowadays?" he asked. I did not--what, do I look like an encyclopedia? "Several hundreds of millions...and that's on a little computer like that [gesturing to my Mac]." Plus I gather the System 3 was not entirely electronic...as I said, more like an electrified mechanical Babbage calculator. It was a semi-mechanical computer. Which is pretty cool. Not entirely unlike my 1930s cast iron gas station cash register that I recently snagged, which is entirely mechanical. (A story for another time).

The article continued, "The device would not become rapidly outdated, she added since 'the system does have growth capabilities.'" Heh.

"The computer memory banks can be increased five times by the addition of more equipment, the printing speed by as much as five and a half times and the storage by 20 times.

"The System 3 also maintains good resale or trade-in value, she said."

It was DARN NOISY though!


"Human Rights Party spokesman Jim Scherer, a member of the audience, opposed purchase of the IBM computer.

"'We have another factor for council to consider,' he said, 'that is that IBM is one of the major war contractors in the Indochina War right now.'"

"Councilman Lawrence J. Lobert agreed with Scherer, saying he would not support purchase of the system. Some other council members indicated they would base their decision on the needs of the city and the merits of the computer." --Ypsilanti Press, May 15, 1973.

The Precursor of Ypsilanti's Beyer Hospital's 1950s Punch Card System was Hollerith's 1890 Census Machine

Cute Programming Tricks on the UNIVAC® 1100

neato mosquito!

Time to Party with the Beyer Memorial Hospital "IBM Department"!

It's Friday night. That means time for fun. So here we go--how about a cartoon, drawn by an engineer, depicting, uh, er, I think it's depicting the punch-card system of....something....at Beyer. How patient information is processed? Or employee check-in? I don't rightly know. Perhaps those wiser then Dusty D can help figger out what in the Sam Hill this is all about and why it's supposedly funny! (Click for larger image).


I do know this: the cartoon figure in the 9:30 panel, pulling his hair, and in the last 2 panels, seen messing around with wires in the punch-card (?) machine, is John Jenkins, the superintendent of Beyer. You can see him here demonstrating one of Beyer's IBM machines to two Pennsylvania Hospital delegates. Beyer's IBM system was, the caption says, "recognized as one of the most modern in the country, which [the Penn Hospital guys] want to use as a model for the Pennsylvania Hospital."

1920 Ypsi Telephone Directory Was Only 9 Pages Long

Belleville's was only two. Willis, one. And all of the Washtenaw County phones were listed in a mere 47 pages.

Ypsilanti's population in 1920 was a little over 7,000 people. Only 1,971 residents owned a telephone: just 28%.

In the directory, addresses could be vague. "One residence, for example, that of John Hamilton, was listed as "Congress Street near limits." Addresses of those outside the city limits were usually listed as 'farm, Ypsilanti township.' If a visitor did not know where the farm was located he could find it simply by asking."

By asking? Is there an app for that?

What would happen today if you were to knock on a door and ask where someone nearby was? They might call the police.

At any rate, the article lists those who had phone numbers 2-9. To call local dry goodsman W. H. Sweet, you could dial, simply, 10. If the user could figure the phone out, that is: "the telephone was apparently still a somewhat baffling apparatus to residents here judging by the multitude of warnings and instructions contained in the book."

The Slow March of Electrical Appliances in Ypsilanti

Dusty D was surprised to see this 1956 Ypsilanti Daily Press ad for an electric clothes dryer. It made me remember how slowly it took Ypsilanti to adopt electricity and how strenuously the electricity company advertised its service and wares. Quick recap of when ads for various electrical doodads appeared in the local papers:

1907: "A Mistaken Idea about Electric Light" ad; also, demos of electric stove.

1919: Various ads pleading with Ypsilantians to have their houses wired, then buy: electric washing machine, grill, iron, sewing machine, toasters, "cleaner."

1933: Bonus ad, at right, to try the new electric stoves with a "free" trial. (Yes, they had started demonstrating these in town in 1907!!)

But it's not till 1956 that the ad for an electric dryer comes along. This can't be because the technology was difficult--if anything, it seems simpler to me. A spinny thing and a hot air thing, right? And lint trap. So why didn't the electric companies dream this up and create a need for it sooner? My guess would be that hanging wash outside is really less of a problem than the problems solved by the earlier appliances.

Do wonder though: why were Ypsilantians so slllloooowwwww to adopt electric STOVES in particular? Seems like a trivial question...but as James Mann says, "The history is in the footnotes."

Allie McCullough, Othello, and Texting

Dusty D has been reflecting on the fact that in the last diary excerpt, Allie said she had been reading "Othello." Not for school, but for leisure. She said she didn't like it much--which means she was also able, at 16 years of age, to assess and evaluate one of the greatest works in the language. She absorbed the content and formed an opinion.

Dusty D does not know of any 16-year-old in Washtenaw County who would not only read Othello for pleasure but be able to express an opinion on it.

Contrast this to the recent NYT story about a family, each of whose members are avid, day-long users of screen culture. Each member of the family checks their cell or computer first thing in the morning--even before breakfast, to which Mom summons them by texting.

How does a given medium shape its content, and how does that particular rendering of content shape our ideas of the nature of knowledge and communication and our technique of processing it?

Allie's world had one medium: print. Her usage of media involved the active technique of reading, in which the reader is actively making sense of the text, proceeding at one's own pace, and in the quiet of the mind forming questions and making evaluations. The medium allows for long, complicated sentences and ideas which we also see in her pastime of attending her Lyceum oratory club. For fun, she attended several hours of oratory at each club meeting. Don't forget the commencement exercise at Normal, which featured a slate of speakers whose number is unimaginable by today's standards.

The medium's content, in something like Othello, is contextualized. Events take place within a long narrative, like the long political essays in the papers of her day. Information is not a hodgepodge of snippets of decontextualized short bits, as in a modern news show or a text message or the average Internet browse.

Dusty D would posit that the media available to Allie, and the lack of such constant modern-day distractions as cellphone rings, conditioned her mind to be better able to weigh complex ideas, form lucid and organized oratory of her own to read at the Lyceum (where her talents were recognized), and have overall a richer and sturdier life of the mind than the average teen today. Her mind was furnished with Hepplewhite. Not Ikea.