COMPUTER MEMORIES, Chapter 05

FIRST TIME I HEARD OF IBM
When I lived in Akron, Ohio, I went to High School in the daytime (for a few months) and worked evenings at the newspaper, the Akron Beacon Journal. All Saturday night, we stuffed the Sunday paper with advertisements and special sections. Occasionally they would let me push the START button on the huge presses, but mainly I kept supplies of wire available for binding bundles of papers, and delivered the first dozen copies off the press, to various offices. Although I would deliver papers to the office of Jack Knight, then owner of the Akron Beacon Journal and later the founder of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, I doubt he ever really saw me.

On the corner across the street was a building with a simple sign that said “International Business Machines” and nothing more.

One day, while having a bite to eat at the diner on another corner, I sat on the stool next to a well dressed man who said he worked for IBM. He told me about 100 words or less about what they did, but that was all it took to get my interest. At that time I was more interested in one of the waitresses at the diner! She was very nice, and was in my class at High School.

I was “stuffing” Sunday papers when Wendle Wilkie died of a coronary thrombosis, on October 8, 1944. We went on coffee break while they put the story in the paper, and when we returned I noticed an error that seemed to say he died before he had the heart attack. They said, “Keep the presses running while we make the correction,” so many people received the paper with the error.

I also grabbed a stack of papers from the press (with the permission of the head pressman), and went to the street to sell the paper announcing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth election as president. Since I did it without his permission, and without the required “bribe,” I later found the “big man” (both physically and as a “boss”) was being very kind to me when he let me off with a warning, rather than the busted head other people said I should expect.

At least a year before the war ended, a complete “EXTRA” edition was set and ready for printing, lacking only a few key dates and numbers. It was kept up to date as well it could be, complete with advertisements and pictures. They knew Main Street would be crowded, so had a photo ready that showed crowds, but no faces, and nothing like a Movie Arcade that would give away the date the photo was taken.