IBM Employees 1956 ENDICOTT & POUGHKEEPSIE, build IBM 650, 705 Mainframe, & 608 Transistor Computer

Computer History: Today we a look at a snapshot in time of the 1956 IBM workforce building computers at the ENDICOTT NY and POUGHKEEPSIE NY plants. Original IBM footage narrated by Walter Cronkite and vintage photos of the time period. IBM workers are building the famous IBM 650 (first mass-produced computer) and the IBM 705 giant mainframe, and the IBM 608 first all-transistorized commercial computer. Original film with explanatory text, and Image Gallery. Film Courtesy of IBM Archives. - Endicott was the birthplace of IBM and has a long record of successful and innovative products throughout its history with IBM. IBM today, headquartered in Armonk, New York, no longer does manufacturing at Endicott. The Poughkeepsie facilities also have a long and impressive history of technical achievements with IBM production. This film takes a brief look at the assembly and testing lines in 1956. Provided for educational and historical review and discussion.
Your comments and thoughts on this time period are welcome. If you had family who had worked at either of these plants, we would love your input as well.
Runtime: 5 mins.

Uploaded by the Computer History Archives Project.

Thank you very much!

Some historic installation firsts for the 650:
The first IBM 650 was installed on December 8, 1954 in the controller's department of the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company in Boston, Massachusetts.

Two IBM 650s were installed at IBM Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University, starting in 1955.

Manulife (Toronto, Ontario) was the first insurance company in Canada to embrace mainframe computer technology with the installation of its IBM 650 in 1956.

The first IBM computer in Australia was a Model 650, installed in IBM's new Sydney Data Centre in 1958. (ACS Heritage Project)

For more information see the following:
-- Bitsavers.org
IBM 650
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/650/
IBM 705
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/705/
IBM 608
http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/608/22-6666-0_608prelim_Nov55.pdf
Ken Shirriff's blog
https://www.righto.com/2018/01/examining-1954-ibm-mainframes-pluggable.html

IBM Archives https://www.ibm.com/history

Internet search for:
“IBM history at Poughkeepsie” and “IBM history at ENDICOTT”

Book: “IBM'S EARLY COMPUTERS,” John H. Palmer, Emerson w. Pugh, Lyle R. Johnson, Charles Bashe, MIT Press, 1985

“14K Days: A History of the Poughkeepsie Laboratory,” the IBM Data Systems Division, 1984, Poughkeepsie, NY

Book: “IBM in Endicott,” Ed Aswas and Suzanne Meredith, Acadia Publishing, 2005 (covers very early IBM history, mostly pre 1955)