1968
Mr. Krohm joined Traders National Bank (Kansas City, Missouri) to install and customize their IBM S/360 demand deposit accounting system. Using COBOL and his assembler language experience on the IBM-1620 at the Kansas City Star, (this DDA package was written in 360 assembler language) Krohm became responsible for the correct processing of over 250,000 check transactions per day affecting over 77,000 checking accounts, as part of a 5-person team providing payroll and other accounting services for 17 "country" banks in the greater Kansas City area. Since Lamar Hunt was chairman of Trader's National Bank, we also did all of the computerized accounting functions for the Kansas City Chiefs organization.

After that installation was completed and things had settled down a bit, Mr. Krohm did contract programming with the only two computerized commercial (non-newspaper) typesetting operations in Kansas City. This involved programming the IBM-1130 to support Photon 560 and Photon 713 phototypesetters at Computer Photocomposition of Kansas City (Missouri) and assisting in the development of the Linotron 505 driver at Mission Photocomposition (Dynacomp, now a Data Documents company in Merriam, Kansas). Turned out that Mission Photocomposition had gotten ahold of one the first 505s. That output driver was later sold to Mergenthaler and used throughout the world on their IBM-1130/Linotron combinations.

A software module (an early applet?) was also developed by Krohm to allow users to make console corrections of paper tape errors, without having to dismount the tape, splice corrections, and then re-run the job. Doesn't sound like much, but it sure was a big deal to the typgraphers using the system every day. This was also sold to Mergenthaler and used on all IBM-1130 systems that they installed.

The above IBM S/360 experience at Trader's also helped in getting a programming contract with the Kansas City Star to assist them in their conversion efforts. As usual, we got the contract AFTER the decisions had already been made and the equipment already installed. The Star had been convinced by IBM's marketing that they needed to move from the IBM-1620 to the new IBM S/360-based typesetting system.

In hindsight, it was an early example of computer industry over-hype and vaporware. After many hardware and software problems and delays, of which we could do little to overcome, we finished our software drivers. But the basic system itself was not well-suited for publishing and it was eventually replaced by a PDP-11 series system.

Next: 1969