On 11/30/13 8:31 PM, nw wrote:
> This took me a little by surprise (again - I was told about this once before) while searching for material on the B5500:
>
> From Datamation, Volume 24, Part 1:
>
> QUOTE
> THE B5500 FINDS A RESTING PLACE AT THE SMITHSONIAN
> History buffs will be glad to learn that the first production model of the Burroughs B5500 was saved at the 11th hour last month fro mthe scrap heap and soon will rest at the Smithsonian Institution
> in Washington. Serial No. 101 of the first machine to offer virtual...
> ENDQUOTE
>
it's in the March, 1978 issue
THE B5500 FINDS A RESTING PLACE AT THE SMITHSONIAN
History buffs will be glad to learn that the first production model
of the Burroughs B5500 was saved at the 11th hour last month from
the scrap heap and soon will rest at the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington. Serial No. 101 of the first machine to offer virtual
memory has been working away at the Burroughs Corp. plant in Pasadena
ever since it came off the production lines in 1962. It was replaced
in February with a B6700 and ordered dismantled and sold for scrap at
12 cents a pound before the March 6 California inventory tax assessment
of about $24,000.
Daniel D. McCracken, the ACM's vice president who earlier had
rescued the venerable Bush Differential Analyzer from a similar fate
at UCLA, put Burroughs people in touch with the Smithsonian. And
later in February, arrangement were under way in Pasadena to ship
the B5500 to Washington, even though connecting pins on the panels
of the machine's 10 cabinets had randomly been bent and cables cut
to insure that the B5500 never again would work as a computer.
Burroughs next problem: what to do with the last production model
of the B5500 which the company donated to Union College in
Schenectady, N.Y. That computer is being replaced with a B6800
and is due to be dismantled in the fall.