interesting Ebay find, old programming template

[Don Shepherd]

This is an interesting computer history artifact I found on Ebay, a plastic programming template for preparing flowcharts from the mid-1950's. Any computer programmer who worked during this period (and following decades) had to prepare flowcharts as part of documenting his/her programs. During my career, I accumulated about a dozen templates, most of them the standard green IBM model. This unit is the grand-daddy of them all, since it comes from the era when computer "programming" began.

From its condition, it appears it was never used (some of mine are cracked and one has white-out all over it). The envelope it came in refers to several models of IBM computers that were present in the mid-1950's: 700 series, 650, 305 RAMAC, and punched card machines. It contains several scales for printing positions, punch card columns, IBM interpreter column spacing, etc.

What a blast from the past.