1960 General Electric Computer - GE 210 - 1961 MICR - Banking Finance Data Processing

From US Government Archives, a 1961 film spotlights the GE 210 Computer. The GE 210 Computer announced in 1960 was based on the earlier ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine Accounting) system developed in the early 1950’s. ERMA systems used MICR (magnetic ink Character recognition) which revolutionized bank check processing. At least 44 systems were produced from 1960 to 1964. Film created for the former Merchandise National Bank of Chicago in 1961.

For more information on the history of GE computers and ERMA systems, the following resources are recommended:

General Electric Computer Department from the bottom up, 1961 through 1965, by Ed Thelen

Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communications and Computation

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[lancelotxavier]

Amazing... they had to deal with so much paper. Remarkable mechanical devices.

[bloqk]

Ten dollars back then was a lot of money in 1961, equal to a half-day's pay for many job holders in the US.
A cup of coffee could be had for les than ten cents.
Five-cent candy bars could still be found at grocers; though 10 cents got you better candy bars.

[lwilton]

Yep, that's how it was done. Then disks replaced tape, and the blinkenlights disappeared from the operator's console. About all that is still the same today is the general design of the check reader/sorter, and even those are slowly going away as people write fewer checks.

[jvolstad]

I'm amazed they do this with tape.

[joegoldman]

My word does operations managers at Executives must have thought they had died and gone to heaven when they learned how much paperwork those computers could process and print and organize

[bloqk]

In today's digital age, the youth are asking: "What are checks?"

Nowadays, if an older person loses their checkbook, fear not! As whomever finds it, those blank checks would be nothing more than mere strips of paper to a young person finding it . . . little to fear about the checks being forged.

[allanegleston]

then along came credit cards . i did a stint at the old united california bank in los angles data center for a while . then that all got shipped off shore . dont trip on a seam in the carpet like i did with a finished run of checks . ohm myyy, what a mess . came back next day and found out that only 7 items were out of sort. and you can tell when the machine is about to jam as it makes a certain noise and then the whole thing grinds to a halt. i got to the point where i could predict which bin was about to jam.pre sort, rough sort and final sort. :)

[howisyourpeterbilt]

Crachett ! You've had your Coal for the day; get back to Work Sir, before I decide I no longer need your Services !

[bassobalalaikka]

nice video but something worries me: 9:48 "Sallys and other documents are shown in the same random order in which they were received by hte reader sorter" then why pay for the sorter function if it does not sort the documents!

[nguyenvanlong]

You try to give the video more brightness it will be great if you do

[davidwell]

GE bailed out of the computer industry way too early.