If you believe that this, no doubt incredibly expensive, no doubt top secret, one of a kind machine was used to figure out where trains stalled on the tracks, I have a bridge to sell you.
The thing has three (four?) wheels of ticker tape on it, that’s a surprising number of train-stallings-per-minute if you get my meaning. I wonder what the machine’s original purpose was! The armored car I understand the need for secrecy around, but why the computer?
But… is this a computer? This article is rather vague and if it just prints out the numbers of the pulled strings… The Wikipedia article about computers says the firsts electromechanical computers were built at the end of the 30’s, however this device is from 1913: more than 20 years earlier! And the Wikipedia article about Grand Central mentions the hidden basement and the German sabotage but there is not a single word about any so-called computer.
And true to the fate of all computers, it was obsolete six years later.
If you believe that this, no doubt incredibly expensive, no doubt top secret, one of a kind machine was used to figure out where trains stalled on the tracks, I have a bridge to sell you.
The thing has three (four?) wheels of ticker tape on it, that’s a surprising number of train-stallings-per-minute if you get my meaning. I wonder what the machine’s original purpose was! The armored car I understand the need for secrecy around, but why the computer?
But… is this a computer? This article is rather vague and if it just prints out the numbers of the pulled strings… The Wikipedia article about computers says the firsts electromechanical computers were built at the end of the 30’s, however this device is from 1913: more than 20 years earlier! And the Wikipedia article about Grand Central mentions the hidden basement and the German sabotage but there is not a single word about any so-called computer.
Does anyone here have more information about it?
If you read carefully it doesn’t say “first” anywhere.
I’ve done this tour. While it looks like Brucker was let go last year for giving them on his days off it was remarkably accessible.