Columbia professor of economics and statistics and NBER researcher Frederick C. Mills was sent the following invitation to visit an open-house at Columbia’s Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory followed by a dinner in honor of Thomas J. Watson (IBM) that was to take place April 20, 1948. [In absence of evidence to the contrary, I presume for now that the dinner took place as announced.] A link is provided below to a history of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory. My favorite illustration is a photo of a “grandfather type clock” that synchronized all clocks throughout the laboratory.
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Carbon Copy of Invitation from Frank Diehl Fackenthal to Frederick C. Mills
[handwritten note:] 3.30.48
Professor Frederick C. Mills
401 Fayerweather
Dear Professor Mills:
I am inviting you to join a small group of approximately fifty scientists who are interested in modern calculating devices to dine with me on April 20 to honor Mr. Thomas J. Watson for his outstanding leadership in the development of mathematical calculating machines and laboratories which has stimulated research in many fields of science. The dinner will be at Faculty House, 400 West 117th Street, at six-thirty p.m. The Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory, at 612 West 116th Street, will be open for inspection from five to six-fifteen p.m., and you are invited to visit that laboratory just before the dinner.
Mr. Watson’s interest in scientific calculating machines began twenty years ago with a series of adaptations of IBM tabulating machines for complex statistical computations which were first applied on a large scale in the Columbia University Statistical Bureau. In 1934 Mr. Watson set up the computing laboratory which has become the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau. In 1940 came the Matrix Multiplier adaptation of the IBM Test Scoring Machine announced in 1936. In 1944 several projects came to dramatic fruition in the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, The Relay Calculators, and the Automatic Recording and Computing Equipment for the wind tunnel laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. In 1945 the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory was established, and in January 1947 the great IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator was dedicated to science.
It will give me and my colleagues much pleasure to have word that you will be our guest on April 20.
Sincerely yours,
Frank Diehl Fackenthal
Acting President
(Business dress at the dinner)
Source: Columbia University Archives. Central Files 1890-. Box 396, Folder “Mills, Frederick Cecil”
Image Source: First home of the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory was a renovated former fraternity house. Illustration on page 15 from The IBM Watson Laboratory at Columbia University—A History by Jean Ford Brennan. 1971.