Badges usage dates?

I'm trying to place the approx service (circa) dates of theses items.

15116 refers to the employee identification number. This is known as the IBM number. No one seems to know what IBM stands for, and why employee numbers are known as IBM numbers. Anyway, the IBM number 15116 would indicate an approximate hire date of 1972.

As far as when the badge was used, I couldn't tell you. There was an usher in Jamaica until recently, that was the longest serving LIRR employee. He retired recently. He was the only usher I have seen to wear a hat with badge. His first name was Thomas. I'm assuming the badge above was used by an usher with the last name Thomas.

http://trainsarefun.com/lirrphotos/capb ... lution.pdf
Dave Keller's site would indicate badges with employee IBM numbers were used early-mid 1980's and the transition was made to the current 4-digit badge numbering system in 1989.

Thank you!

Is it possible that at some time in the past the Payroll Dept. installed a system from IBM that required all employees to be assigned a number as part of a uniform scheme and those numbers began to be known informally as IBM numbers to distinguish them from the previous ones?

IBM stands for exactly that, International Business Machines.

LIRR was the first railroad to use an IBM system for computing. I think it was 1958,

for those familiar with IBM punch cards, the rectangular manila cards with one corner cut 45 degrees, the rr still uses them today for tools and materials (obviously no longer entered that with a punch card reader)

The blue badges had a very short life, probably part of one year in the early-1990s. Employees immediately complained that access to their names resulted in a barrage of malcontent patrons' harassment of them at home.

Their first name and IBM Number was then substituted and replacement badges arrived. Since the employee's IBM Number served as his account number at the LIRR's credit union, employees then feared that public access to that number compromised their personal savings accounts. The unions petitioned the Carrier, who complained that employees' huge life savings were at risk and the badges were dropped. They were never widely used, and no attempt was made to require their use in most crafts.

Gold badges followed a couple of years later. One of the many presidents, anti-labor Bruce McIver saw the tellers across the street at Chemical Bank wearing them, and felt they "looked cool". A few hundred were ordered and distributed, but that's as far as it went. I don't believe many, if any crafts required employees to use them, again because unions pushed back about displaying their names to the public at large. Several people liked and used them, but they were few. Neither of these articles were issued to train crews, but only supervisors, some ushers, some station employees and perhaps a few other crafts.

Even the trainmen's newer badges, when first issued to the Transportation Test Team as a trial, contained IBM Numbers. They were replaced by a different set of numbers after complaints.

When we worked there each pair of badges (we got two) arrived in an envelope, like so many other things, with no explanation or direction and were never worn. The blue one sits on our desk today, as it sat at work thirty years ago. It's cute and with my pension check reminds me of the many good years in the past.

Thank you!

BuddR32 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 11:31 pm IBM stands for exactly that, International Business Machines.

LIRR was the first railroad to use an IBM system for computing. I think it was 1958,

for those familiar with IBM punch cards, the rectangular manila cards with one corner cut 45 degrees, the rr still uses them today for tools and materials (obviously no longer entered that with a punch card reader)

Last time I saw punched cards was when I threw out my college programming class decks (at the end of a term, I'd send my program source to the sys punch plus print it all out) . That happened close to 30 years ago; the classes almost 50 years ago.

Are you sure LIRR doesn't still use them for computing?

When I started as a trace clerk in the Pennsylvania Railroad off-line sales office in Boston in 1956, they had an IBM keypunch and card sorter, using those cards. The sorter was made of a black metal, with molded legs modeled after Duncan Phyffe (sp?) or Sheraton, or one of those, and fine gold lines painted down the legs to the claws (!) at the feet. One of those should be in the Smithsonian today (and maybe is), but it was cutting-edge back then.

Sidebar: Yup, IBM punch cards in 1980 at NYUniv Computer course to run JCL (Job Control Language) and then compile the card deck(s) for the COBOL program you wrote for class. Couldn't get to run correctly for days...went over and over the code... Finally, found the error: The daisy wheel printer had a broken comma (,) that left a period (.) Yipes!

ExCon90 wrote: ↑Sat Jun 18, 2022 11:12 pm When I started as a trace clerk in the Pennsylvania Railroad off-line sales office in Boston in 1956, they had an IBM keypunch and card sorter, using those cards. The sorter was made of a black metal, with molded legs modeled after Duncan Phyffe (sp?) or Sheraton, or one of those, and fine gold lines painted down the legs to the claws (!) at the feet. One of those should be in the Smithsonian today (and maybe is), but it was cutting-edge back then.

When I studied programming and Information Systems in college, I was in the first class to NOT be trained in how to set up Wired Control Panels. Though we did learn how to use them. By sophomore year, we finally had disk drives and terminals (teletypes, LA36's, and a few CRT's) to enter our programs 'online', the beginning of the end for us of keypunching. Sort of sad - I was already a good typist, and by then already good at coding on cards in COBOL.

nyandw wrote: ↑Sun Jun 19, 2022 12:01 am Sidebar: Yup, IBM punch cards in 1980 at NYUniv Computer course to run JCL (Job Control Language) and then compile the card deck(s) for the COBOL program you wrote for class. Couldn't get to run correctly for days...went over and over the code... Finally, found the error: The daisy wheel printer had a broken comma (,) that left a period (.) Yipes!

As of fall 1974 we were no longer regularly using punched cards at my little state college. Only thing I used them for was, at end of term, saving my code. Still had JCL, but all done via early terminals. What may have made the difference - my prof did the programming for the entire state college system in PA. Though as advanced as he was, I'd already seen more advanced (though not in college). A hospital I was an teen volunteer in got a computer system around 1972 where every department had access - to enter patients and all orders in 'realtime'. Those orders would print out in the department, such as xray. Decades ahead of most hospitals.

Steve: The first blue badge with the LIRR 1834 logo dates from 1984 to 1989 thereabouts...
The 1834 LIRR logo was revived with the LIRR 175th Anniversary back in 1984...
I remember that Ticket Agents/Clerks were required to display the badge with their first name
and IBM number when they were selling tickets during those years...

The hat badge that K&K mentions for Conductors and Trainmen had a large 1834 logo along with
the IBM number displayed - these were very short-lived (18 months or less) and even though it was
an attractive hat badge train crew members were reluctant or just did not use them...

The PCSA badge dates from no older than 1994 - when the MTA pac-man logo went into use...
As we see there is no personal information on these later badges...

Speaking of IBM cards and sizes...The recent-years replaced duplex fare receipts were IBM card size...
Does anyone remember "Please Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate" on IBM cards? MACTRAXX