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Description
This board belonged to a computer of about 50 years ago called a Singer System Ten.

The big milestones in computer progress are preserved in museums but the lesser lights like this are disappearing into the mists of time and will soon be lost from human knowledge.

Some background if you are interested:

Yes, that is the Singer of sewing machine fame. Back in the day they had a Business Machines Division that they eventually sold to ICL. The computer had a VERY unusual architecture that eventually turned into a blind alley though ICL did produce an updated version called a System 25. These machines were actually very nice to both use and to develop software for and that is why they lingered for quite a while.

About 40 years ago I was doing software development work for a company that was upgrading from a System 10 to a System 25. I could not do my work while they were using it so I would bowl up towards the end of the working day and work on into the evening and the night.

On this particular day I found that the System 10 had been dismantled and thrown into a skip (and pretty much filled it). Things were changing so fast at the time that once a machine was superseded it became TOTALLY unwanted and just scrapped (those edge connectors were gold plated to resist corrosion)!

They were happy for me to take a couple of mementos from it but the skip was on the point of being picked up. I just had time to grab a couple of boards that I liked the look of and then it was gone. I can't say much about the purpose of this board because I was on the software side and not the engineering but I found it aesthetically pleasing. I still have them and with the passage of time they look like they are from a different world. Well I suppose they are.

This is the un-manipulated photo: the board is 12 inches by 7 inches.

Wikipedia on the System Ten: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singer_S…

Description
This board belonged to a computer of about 50 years ago called a Singer System Ten.

The big milestones in computer progress are preserved in museums but the lesser lights like this are disappearing into the mists of time and will soon be lost from human knowledge.

Some background if you are interested:

Yes, that is the Singer of sewing machine fame. Back in the day they had a Business Machines Division that they eventually sold to ICL. The computer had a VERY unusual architecture that eventually turned into a blind alley though ICL did produce an updated version called a System 25. These machines were actually very nice to both use and to develop software for and that is why they lingered for quite a while.

About 40 years ago I was doing software development work for a company that was upgrading from a System 10 to a System 25. I could not do my work while they were using it so I would bowl up towards the end of the working day and work on into the evening and the night.

On this particular day I found that the System 10 had been dismantled and thrown into a skip (and pretty much filled it). Things were changing so fast at the time that once a machine was superseded it became TOTALLY unwanted and just scrapped (those edge connectors were gold plated to resist corrosion)!

They were happy for me to take a couple of mementos from it but the skip was on the point of being picked up. I just had time to grab a couple of boards that I liked the look of and then it was gone. I can't say much about the purpose of this board because I was on the software side and not the engineering but I found it aesthetically pleasing. I still have them and with the passage of time they look like they are from a different world. Well I suppose they are.

This is the un-manipulated photo: the board is 12 inches by 7 inches.

Wikipedia on the System Ten: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singer_S…