The IBM 1401 mainframe runs "Edith"
CuriousMarc2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2020–2023
demo · general · evergreen · 2020–2023 on HN
CuriousMarc runs the program 'Edith' on a 1959 IBM 1401 mainframe at the Computer History Museum. The program prints a famous line-printer image on the vintage machine. The video is part retro-computing demo and part joke.
HN points to it as a fun, well-known example of line-printer art on early IBM hardware, and to the channel for vintage computing history.
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4 comments from Hacker News
Here's a fun IBM line printing video I've discovered thanks to your mention of those: The IBM 1401 mainframe runs "Edith" ▶ this video
While much more on the technical side of things, both Ken Shirriff and Curious Marc are great resources for a lot of the historical and technical aspects of things. I'd highly recommend both of them for looking at specific topics of how the computing hardware worked: - Marc's videos on old HP computers, link - Marc's videos on restoring some old IBM hardware, that includes a good bit of the history that went into them, link and ▶ this video - In fact just look at his playlists directly, link For Ken, I'd look at his chip teardowns and explorations, the AM2901 is on HN this very moment, link A lot of his articles dig into why the different chip technologies were made and fell out of favor eventually too. link
I think using characters to make pictures started with teletype machines - maybe even on typewriters! It was common with ham operators in the 60s (RTTY & Teletype machines) and it surely must have been popular before that. On the IBM 1401 (1959) "Edith" is legendary: ▶ this video
Before this, there was line printer art; see "The IBM 1401 mainframe runs 'Edith'": ▶ this video