IBM Arrives

THE absence of blank class cards in the elective envelopes distributed to students shortly after Thanksgiving recess marked, in a rather subdued way, the further infiltration of administrative purlieus by the Machine. The College this month places in operation five IBM machines in the new Tabulating Center in the basement of College Hall. The Center's first operations will be concerned with course enrollments for the second semester, and the class cards can be skipped because now the Registrar's Office will supply instructors with machine-printed class lists.

In an announcement last month about the Tabulating Center, Prof. Robin Robinson '24, Associate Registrar, said, "It is not the intention of the Registrar's Office to introduce a violent revolution in the outward appearance of familiar procedures, but by steady evolution to secure economy of manual operations and consequent greater speed in routines.... A byproduct will be that for the first time a groundwork will be laid whereby statistical studies desired by the faculty and administrative agencies will become standard operations rather than projects requiring extraordinary expenditure of time, energy, and college funds."

Grade reports as. well as class lists will be expedited by the machines, which are an 024 key punch, an 075 sorter, a 552 interpreter, a 514 reproducing punch, and a 402 accounting machine. Class cards will still exist, but they will be punched cards to be kept in the Tabulating Center for continual use for a variety of purposes.

Operation of the machines will be the responsibility of Mr. Sears Larrabee, the Tabulating Supervisor, who joins the College staff with considerable tabulating experience in industry. His work will be under the general direction of Professor Robinson, who next year becomes Registrar of the College, upon the retirement of Robert O. Conant '13.

Next month, according to present plans, the College will also install a dial telephone system along with expanded telephone facilities. Preparations have been under way for some months. As part of the program to improve service within the College, more separate branch numbers will be available and more telephones will be installed in individual faculty offices. One of the perquisites of a full professorship henceforth will be a private phone. Faculty wags can be counted upon to have alliterative fun with tenure and a telephone.