In Pictures: If it ain't broke, don't fix it: ancient computers in use today

From 1970s minicomputers used for military programs (including nuclear weapons) to an IBM punch-card system still keeping the books at a Texas filter supplier, these are the computers that time forgot.

Punch card accounting

This photo shows Sparkler Filters' IBM 402, with self-employed field engineer Duwayne Leafley in the foreground. Sparkler’s IBM 402 is an automated electromechanical tabulator that can be programmed (or more accurately, wired) to print out certain results based on values encoded into stacks of 80-column Hollerith-type punched cards. Companies traditionally used the 402 for accounting, since the machine could take a long list of numbers, add them up, and print a detailed written report.

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