year 1949

The IBM 407 was the last and best of the all-electromechanical IBM accounting machines (previously known as tabulators). The 407 read punch cards, totaled fields on the cards, made simple decisions, printed results, and, with the aid of a summary punch, output results on cards that could be input to other processing steps. The 407 could read up to 150 cards per minute. For printing, the 407 used spinning wheels, an improvement over earlier tabulators that used print bars. In 1955, the 407 was adapted to act as an input/output device for the IBM 650 computer. Later, 407 print mechanisms were used in the IBM 1133 lineprinter, part of the low cost IBM 1130 computer system. The 407 was programmed by inserting wire jumpers into a plug-board. There were holes for each card column, print position, counter digit, and so on.