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The IBM 1401 mainframe runs "Edith"

CuriousMarc · 223.6K views · 2018-06-02 · 11:09

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Overview

CuriousMarc runs the program 'Edith' on a 1959 IBM 1401 mainframe at the Computer History Museum. The program prints a famous line-printer image on the vintage machine. The video is part retro-computing demo and part joke.

On Hacker News

HN points to it as a fun, well-known example of line-printer art on early IBM hardware, and to the channel for vintage computing history.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2020–2023

Topics

Demoscene & retrocomputingHistory of computing
Search by tags
ibm 1401line printermainframecomputer historyretrocomputing

What people said

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 · 2021-01 · Recommendation

Here's a fun IBM line printing video I've discovered thanks to your mention of those: The IBM 1401 mainframe runs "Edith" [VIDEO]

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simcop2387 · 2020-04 · Recommendation

While much more on the technical side of things, both Ken Shirriff and Curious Marc are great resources for a lot of the historical and technical aspects of things. I'd highly recommend both of them for looking at specific topics of how the computing hardware worked: - Marc's videos on old HP computers, [LINK] - Marc's videos on restoring some old IBM hardware, that includes a good bit of the history that went into them, [LINK] and [VIDEO] - In fact just look at his playlists directly, [LINK] For Ken, I'd look at his chip teardowns and explorations, the AM2901 is on HN this very moment, [LINK] A lot of his articles dig into why the different chip technologies were made and fell out of favor eventually too. [LINK]

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GeorgeTirebiter · 2023-10 · Reference

I think using characters to make pictures started with teletype machines - maybe even on typewriters! It was common with ham operators in the 60s (RTTY & Teletype machines) and it surely must have been popular before that. On the IBM 1401 (1959) "Edith" is legendary: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by CuriousMarc, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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