Now it can be told, continued

Arlington Hall was a secret base. No one was allowed out and only certified people could come in. After we were assigned our quarters, in one of the three or four barracks lined up on the road, we quickly settled into the routine of the base. I was disappointed that our little quartet was separated and sent to different barracks, but we saw each other in training and there were plenty of opportunities to socialize in the theatre, library or recreational hall. We started our training almost immediately, and I remember developing a certain fondness for the big IBM machines, each with a placard attached which admonished us to THINK. With the exception of the sorter, the guiding force of each machine was a wiring board. A large, heavy frame with various wires plugged into holes in a grid, the wiring board could be altered to conform to whatever direction the operator wished it to follow.
To my surprise, I actually learned to wire the board. I had expected to be somewhat retarded since I had done so poorly in the mechanics aptitude test, but I think I only trained for a couple of weeks before I got my own unit and went to work.
It was none too soon. The training was done in the daytime, and I had been assigned to a barracks where everyone worked from midnight to eight in the morning. The “graveyard” shift. It didn’t lend itself to any kind of restful sleep. But as soon as I started to work, I fit right in.
In some convoluted twist of judgment from the powers that be, we worked rotating shifts. We never got used to any one sleeping pattern, and wandered through the days half asleep and out of sync. The machines were kept going twenty-four hours and were only shut down when the punch cards jammed up and the reproducer or collator had to be dismantled and the damaged cards removed.

The work was hard, but if one had the unit running smoothly and the cards didn’t jam up, it was possible to keep one eye on the machines and still manage to read or study. I took a couple of classes in my off-duty hours and sometimes studied while I worked. The reproducer was the problem machine, and if the cards jammed there was nothing to be done but to dismantle the thing, drag up the wiring board, and delve into the greasy depths for the mangled cards. My unit was set up with a sorter, reproducer, collator and printer. They ran independently of each other, but if one stopped and no more cards could be processed, the whole unit was held up. It was troublesome but we were all in the same boat together. Since the weather was muggy and warm, the cards often stuck together, warped or refused to move smoothly through the machine. We joked that we were fighting the battle of the IBM cards.