Here's a strange/true story I found fascinating:
A Cautionary Tale
In response to my recent column about a mysterious glitch in Palm's latest organizers, reader Bob Sutton easily topped me with the following hilarious true story. With his permission, I'm delighted to pass it along to you.
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Twenty-five years ago, I was a rookie computer salesman at Burroughs Corporation, an industry pioneer. Among other things, we manufactured magnetic-ink proof encoding systems that banks used to process incoming checks before routing them through the check-clearing network.
My boss, a scrappy New Yorker named Mary who'd won a small measure of notoriety as the company's first female branch manager, was the account manager for Chase Manhattan Bank, forerunner of today's global behemoth. Chase used hundreds of our MICR Proof Encoders each evening as millions of check deposits were balanced, encoded and presented to other banks for payment. The bank employed a small army of night-shift workers to operate these machines.
These women possessed extraordinary keyboard skills and concentration. Held to very strenuous quality control standards, they would perch atop tall stools all night, heads down, while an endless stream of paper checks traversed the machine's carriage. As each check popped into view for an instant, the operator's job was to examine the handwritten amount and type it into the system's memory. In a cacophonic burst of noise, the Burroughs Encoders would print whatever was typed along the bottom margin of the check in magnetic ink, making subsequent automated handling possible. This was a highly disciplined factory environment and, to my eyes, pretty grim work.
Anyway, a day came when Burroughs introduced a vaunted new model of proof encoding machines, one that relied even more on electronic circuitry and integration with the company's computer systems. A fierce sales battle was waged and won, and my boss gleefully received her authorization to install some of the first units at Chase, the company's premier account. A dozen engineers went to work installing the noisy, desk-sized workstations in a climate-controlled football field of a room on Water Street. Finally, everything was ready for a live run using real checks.
But the systems bombed horribly. After a weekend of testing, error rates were up across the board: wrong amounts were being printed, tallies didn't tally and ladies who'd prided themselves on speed and accuracy were reduced to tears by unexplained printouts. Chase executives were furious. Experts were flown in from the plant in Scotland; they spent hours disassembling random machines and plugging in scopes to monitor performance. Bank managers grilled the individual operators repeatedly, trying to rule out sloppy work as a source of the problem. The fate of Burroughs' pilot program hung in the balance.
Just when nothing seemed to work, someone noticed that he could reproduce a similar error by introducing a mild electrostatic shock to a machine that was running. The experts scratched their heads, but no one could suggest an apparent source for such a discharge.
That's when my boss, the feisty Irish gal from the Bronx, said, "Listen up, ladies! How many of you are wearing nylon underpants?"
An embarrassed hush descended over the keyboards. Bank managers loomed, livid, unsure where this was heading.
"Pantyhose?"
A throng of suddenly attentive men in the room became silent as a dozen furtive hands went up.
"Tomorrow I want you to come back wearing cotton panties. Does everyone comprende?"
There were nods of assent. One of the young Scottish engineers smiled conspiratorially, but Mary froze him with a steely glance.
The next night, bemused, expectant faces greeted the women as they filed into the room and took their places at the machines. As each girl scooted up onto a stool, suddenly everyone comprehended what Mary had noticed. Vinyl seat cushions, when interacting with a random assortment of nylon-clad derrieres, produce a prodigious static charge. Touch a keyboard and the charge is released. In that era, it was a sequence that stolid, cotton-favoring male engineers would find difficult to reproduce. The experts now had a plausible suspect, and an inkling into the curious intermittent nature of the crisis. Whenever any individual operator switched machines (or varied her confidential attire) over sequential shifts, the problem shifted. With a minor sartorial change, error rates declined abruptly.
As you've frequently reported, folks who solve technology puzzles are a pretty resourceful bunch. But I'll wager that that night was the only time a roomful of earnest cotton briefs and an industry pioneer's feminine intuition combined to avert an engineering and Human Resources debacle!
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