I read the book, and Black presented a somewhat convincing circumstantial case. But there was no 'smoking gun'.
While its clear to me that IBM had some involvement in supplying hardware - it was also clear to me that this was IBM Germany (Dehomag) not IBM NY - while it was possible that IBM NY did know exactly how the machines were going to used - the book in my opinion made a leap of logic, by simply stating "they had to have known".
IBM supplied machines for tabulating, Germany used it for the Census, and for the railways, and it was used in many other occupied territories for similar purposes. To those ends, yes, they assisted in the holocaust - but I'm not at all convinced that the death toll would not have been the same without IBM.
In the end, none of this diminishes the technical achievements of IBM, its a side story - one you'd find in many multi-national corporations that existed during the holocaust.
And the link directly takes you to a "how to buy". There are multiple copies available. A bigger question is why we in the computer field let important histories of our profession go out of print so quickly.
This, and "IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems" are two of my favorite computer-related books. I wish other historical books were as thick and as thorough and well-written.
If you're interested in documentation on early IBM computers, including the rare 600/700 series, there is a ton of stuff here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/
I'm reading this book right now and it's glorious- it goes into a ton of detail on the history and design of early mechanical punchcard tabulators, sorters, multipliers, etc, in order to get you to the motivation to make it all electronic, etc.
Highly recommend it.
Also- this "printing" is really more a xerox of the original- and the "print" quality stinks. I got an older hardcover version off of amazon that was actually typeset and much easier to read.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 52.3 ms ] threadOr like most IBM histories, are we skipping that part?
Seriously, we all know about this right?
There was a book and everything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
While its clear to me that IBM had some involvement in supplying hardware - it was also clear to me that this was IBM Germany (Dehomag) not IBM NY - while it was possible that IBM NY did know exactly how the machines were going to used - the book in my opinion made a leap of logic, by simply stating "they had to have known".
IBM supplied machines for tabulating, Germany used it for the Census, and for the railways, and it was used in many other occupied territories for similar purposes. To those ends, yes, they assisted in the holocaust - but I'm not at all convinced that the death toll would not have been the same without IBM.
In the end, none of this diminishes the technical achievements of IBM, its a side story - one you'd find in many multi-national corporations that existed during the holocaust.
Coca Cola also invented Fanta to circumvent trade embargos on Nazi Germany
Really could go on with this list. But it's not really that interesting or relevant to the actual discussion here
Highly recommend it.
Also- this "printing" is really more a xerox of the original- and the "print" quality stinks. I got an older hardcover version off of amazon that was actually typeset and much easier to read.