... a picture of the 1401 taken in April 1960 at the Hanover Fair. My wife and I were there (that is her in the picture ) and my recollection is that this was taken while the system was being checked out the day before the fair started.

This system was our engineering model used for announcement testing and I did not want to send it to Europe but Dick Watson insisted. As you know, engineering models are not exactly "up to spec" in many areas and I was also concerned that shipping it overseas in its somewhat fragile state would result in damage causing demonstration problems. Fortunately the system performed flawlessly throughout the Fair and was a big hit with the Europeans. I should note that IBM Germany send over technicians which we trained to service the system and they did an outstanding job.

A few days after the Fair, I was called by IBM Netherlands saying they had a problem with the system, were installed for demonstration in a CUSTOMER'S office (much to my surprise), and needed help. We put our best person on the plane to help but they corrected the problem before he arrived.