Vintage IBM 407 Control Panel - - Very Rare On Ebay

Vintage IBM 407 Control Panel - Very nice condition - Rare on ebay. Most IBM punch-card equipment such as  tabulators, accounting machines, multiplying and summary punches, and calculators operated under the control of a plugboard, referred to as a control panel. Users wired control panels to specify exactly which card columns were to be read or punched, which card fields were to be fed to which accumulators, and so forth, depending on the machine.The control panel contains a... matrix of holes sectioned off into functional areas with small labels printed in white. To program the machine to do a particular task (such as read a deck of cards, print each card in a certain format, add up the numbers in columns and print the total), jumper wires of various lengths and colors were inserted to connect pairs of holes, such as card columns to printer columns, card columns to accumulators.  Control panels could easily be swapped in and out on the side of the machine so they would not have to be rewired between different jobs.  Various IBM machines were programmed the same way. This particular control panel was used on the IBM 407 (there is an ID plate shown in one of the photos with 910 on it - I'm told this refers to the size and configuration of the board).  The IBM 407 Accounting Machine, introduced in 1949, was one of a long line of IBM tabulating machines.   If interested, you can read about wiring methods used for various IBM unit record (punch card) machines at several websites by searching "IBM 407 wiring."This control panel is a great piece of computing history.Will ship with USPS Priority Mail.

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