Gallery: How Social Security Rescued IBM From Death by Depression
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*In the late 1930s, the advent of Social Security – and collating machines like this one – may have saved IBM from destruction. Image: IBM*
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*IBM explains the Social Security revolution in a brochure from the late 1930s. Image: IBM*
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*A January 1937 Sunday News article on Baltimore's new Social Security Board (subsequently renamed the Social Security Administration). "Thanks to the Social Security Board this city is now famous for one thing more than fried chicken and terrapin a la Maryland." Image: IBM*
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*Another look at a punch card machine. Image: IBM*
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*A staffer operates an IBM 405 Accounting Machine. The Social Security Board's paper records took up 24,000 square feet of floorspace. Combined with IBM's machines, no building in Washington, D.C. was big enough and sturdy enough to do the job. That's why Social Security's offices were set up in Baltimore. Image: IBM*
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*The IBM 77 Collator could compare 240 cards per minute from each of these slots. Image: IBM*
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*How big data was done in the 1930s. The Social Security Board hired thousands of people to manage its massive data-entry project. Image: IBM*
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*Social Security started paying out in January 1940. Ida May Fuller, a retired legal secretary from Rutland, Vermont, was issued check number 00-000-001 on January 31, 1940. Amount: $22.54.* Photo: U.S. Department of the Treasury
