Flowcharting Templates

Introduction

In the years following World War II, electronic computer makers and users developed techniques for programming of the newly invented devices. Fledgling manufacturers sought to communicate possible uses of their machines to customers and to train people to program them. To assist in these endeavors, they used special diagrams called flow charts. By the mid-1950s, such efforts had generated a new drawing instrument, the flowcharting template, a plastic rectangle with the symbols needed to draw flow charts cut out of it.

Resources

Nathan Ensmenger, “The Multiple Meanings of a Flowchart,” Information & Culture 51, no. 3 (August 2016), pp. 321–51.

Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley, and Crispin Rope, ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer, Cambridge: MIT Press (2016) esp. 74-79, 204-206. This article discusses charts made for the ENIAC computer.

Grace M. Hopper, The Calculation of Extended Insurance, Philadelphia, 1950. A photocopy of this document is in the collection of unprocessed computer documentation at the National Museum of American History. It uses flowcharts to describe the UNIVAC I computer.

Robert J. Rossheim, “Report on Proposed American Standard Flowchart Symbols for Information Processing,” Communications of the ACM  6, no. 10 (October 1963), pp. 599-604.

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Bunker-Ramo Corporation Computer Diagarmming Template (Flowcharting Template)

This translucent green flowcharting template has a grid of black lines, with twenty-four symbols cut out of it. Three additional cutouts are along the edges. Symbols are not labeled. A six-inch scale along the bottom of the template is divided to sixths of an inch.
Description
This translucent green flowcharting template has a grid of black lines, with twenty-four symbols cut out of it. Three additional cutouts are along the edges. Symbols are not labeled. A six-inch scale along the bottom of the template is divided to sixths of an inch. One along the top is divided to tenths of an inch. Text on the template reads: COMPUTER DIAGRAMMING TEMPLATE. Further text reads: THE BUNKER-RAMO CORPORATION.
Bunker-Ramo Corporation formed in 1964 as an electronic information-handling company, joining together the electronics system and products division of the Martin-Marietta Corporation, the Teleregister Corporation, and the computer division of Thompson Ramo Wooldridge. One early achievement of the company was a bibliographic system known as RECON developed for NASA. In 1981, the firm was acquired by Allied Corporation.
This template closely resembles one shown in a 1963 catalog of RapiDesign, Inc. of Burbank, California. It sold at the time for $2.50
References:
William Mitchell, “The Genesis of NASA RECON,” The History and Heritage of Scientific and Technological Information Systems, ed. W. Boyd Rayward and Mary Ellen Bowden, Medford, NJ: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2004, pp. 228-245.
Robert J. Cole, “Allied Pays $358 Million for Bunker,” New York Times, May 12, 1981, p. D1.
RapiDesign, Inc., Drafting Templates Catalogue No. 70, Burbank, California, 1963, p. 14.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1965
maker
Bunker-Ramo Corporation
ID Number
1996.3015.03
catalog number
1996.3015.03
nonaccession number
1996.3015

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