This all came from the estate of an IBM employee. His name is on one of the signs but I couldn't find much about him. I was told he was an engineer at IBM.
I've covered the importance of Eliot Noyes in past posts but here's a summary. He studied architecture at Harvard under Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. He worked for Marcel Breuer and Gropius' architecture firm shortly after graduating. Noyes was also the first Director of Industrial Design at MoMA and was a central figure with the Organic Home Furnishings and Good Design exhibitions. This was all interrupted by WWII.
While working at the Pentagon during WWII,
Noyes became friends with Thomas J. Watson Jr., future president, CEO, and chairman of IBM. After the war, Noyes worked in the Norman
Bel Geddes office, which won a commission to redesign IBM’s office machines. Eventually the Geddes office closed and Noyes won the typewriter contract for himself. He then famously designed the groundbreaking Selectric model. He would end up as the consultant design director for IBM for 21 years.
The Selectric launched in 1961 and was an incredible success.
Eliot Noyes brought in Paul Rand, Charles Eames, George Nelson, and Edgar Kaufmann Jr. as consultants for IBM. He also commissioned Marcel Breuer, Max Abramovitz, Mies van der Rohe, Paul Rudolph, and Eero Saarinen for individual projects.
The work on typewriters evolved into computers. IBM was betting the farm on the emerging computer field and the 1401 was more successful than they ever imagined. "IBM was pleasantly surprised (perhaps shocked) to receive 5,200 orders in just the first five weeks – more than predicted for the entire life of the machine!" The number of installed 1401s peaked above 10,000 in the mid-1960s. "In all, by the mid-1960s nearly half of all computer systems in the world were 1401-type systems." (Source)
Noyes and his team didn't have much (if anything) to do with the innerworkings of the machines, but he was involved with designing the casings and color system. A pamphlet called "IBM: Color for Computers" announced customers could purchase the machines in “Flame Red, Sun Yellow or Sky Blue,” in addition to “Deep Charcoal and Light Gray.”
There is also someone who recently made on that is just insane. See that here.
This is actually the IBM 360, which came just after the 1401, but it's such a great photo and really showcases the color scheme.
Sun Yellow doesn't appear to have been a popular color choice. I did find this photo of one with Thomas J. Watson Jr, IBM President and buddy to Eliot Noyes.
Source: National Post, 1961
The 1401 computer of 1959 weighed about five tons and had about 16 kilobytes of memory.
