Punched Cards and the Holocaust - the Lecture by Edwin Black, IBM And The Holocaust

The Book by Edwin Black, IBM And The Holocaust, reinforces its descriptions of the role IBM played throughout the six different phases of the Holocaust with meticulous evidence. I found the narrative about the many boxes of proof that flowed to the author as he worked on his study, the many boxes arrayed all across his basement floor and filled with file folders several people hurried around at a time to cross reference very moving. On the internet we learn that Brad Pitt is working on a film version of the book.


During the free brown bag lecture at PLU yesterday by Edwin Black, author of IBM And The Holocaust, my thoughts often returned to the punched cards I worked with at Tacoma Public Library for my last two years of high school. At the Pacific Northwest Room the librarian gave me a file folder and ordered scrapbooks from 1965 from their storage. I found a pamphlet from February, 1962 that explained the Brodac Thermography System and a newspaper article (February 25, 1962) about the installation of the new system throughout the libraries. This year it is fifty years since the BRODAC system was installed at Tacoma Public Library.

The originator of BRODAC was Arthur Brody of BRODART, a library services company. Their website explains includes a memorial for Arthur Brody, June 30, 1920 – May 10, 2012. He invented the plastic book jacket, among other library supplies, and developed magic tape.

This is from the internet, Library Technology Timeline

1956

Brodart introduced it's circualtion system "Brodac" at the 1956 ALA conference. Brodac used heat sensitive paper, similar to film to recod circulation transactions.

Source: Library Trends, October 1956

This was my experience with punched cards: Early during a shift a page would stamped the due date on a lot of transaction cards, red cards for seven-day, green for children's books, and black for adult books. Separate transaction cards to cut the numbers used in half. The numbered transaction cards went out with the checked-out books in numerical order, and they were the cards with punches. They came back at random. Clerks returned the cards to numerical order by running a spindle or wand through the holes in a certain order. They stacked the cards together by shoving and tapping them as though they were shuffling a deck, then they ran the wand through a big stack. Some cards remained on the spindle, and some fell. The clerk did this many times, until the cards were in order.