Four of IBM's pioneering inventors are meeting
in this undated photograph. From left to right, they
are Fred M. Carroll, Frederick L. Fuller, J. Roydon
Peirce and Eugene A. Ford.
Fred Carroll was one of the young IBM company's leading
engineers and designers and a prolific inventor (with
97 patents).
The following is the text of a biographical article
published in the IBM employee publication Business Machines in December 1961, shortly after his death.
When a young inventor named Fred Carroll left the
National Cash Register Company to join IBM (then Computing-Tabulating-Recording)
in June of 1916, he found a small company with a growing
reputation in weight and time recording devices.
When he retired in 1956, 40 years later, he had helped
to revolutionize the entire business machines industry.
In a sense, his death on October 30th, at the age of
91, marks the end of an era. For Mr. Carroll was the
last survivor of a group of senior engineers, including
Clair D. Lake,
Eugene A. Ford,
Albert W. Mills, Fred. L. Fuller, J. Roydon Peirce,
and James W. Bryce,
who pioneered IBM's original line of accounting machines.
Each of these men was a rugged individualist. Most
of them achieved success by combining three qualities:
good engineering, a single, minded approach to their
current project, and, on occasion, aggressive salesmanship
to obtain support for his projects.
In one way, Mr. Carroll was an exception to this tradition.
He was quiet and reserved. He could rarely be persuaded
to speak before any large group. Believing it to be
beneath his dignity to laud the value of his inventions,
he let his machines "speak for themselves."
As an engineer and designer, Fred Carroll was a perfectionist.
His meticulous attention to design detail invariably
led to the development of a better machine, although
it sometimes taxed the draftsmen and technicians who
worked for him. "His only hobby was his job,"
said one of his former associates at the Product Development
Laboratory in Endicott. "If he wasn't actually
creating something, he was reading technical or scientific
papers to raise his own educational level."
Fred Carroll laid the groundwork for his creative career
as a boy in Union City, Pennsylvania. Experimenting
with bicycles, he came up with a "cyclometer,"
a mileage recorder. In 1896, this device became his
first patented invention.
Fifty years later, Fred Carroll's inquiring mind had
brought him 97 patents — and a reputation as one
of the most prolific inventors in IBM history.
At least three of his inventions caused major thrusts
in IBM's growth: an automatic high-speed rotary
card manufacturing machine in the l920's revolutionized
the art of card manufacture; the unit counter led to
many developments in IBM data processing machines; the
"compensating carriage," automatically feeding
and spacing single and continuous paper forms, was the
first important connecting link between IBM data processing
machines and continuous business forms.
Before Mr. Carroll developed the rotary card manufacturing
machine, card production on flat-bed machines was slow,
noisy and expensive. The machine's maximum production
rate of 120 cards per minute could not satisfy the growing
demands of industry for precision record-keeping.
Fred Carroll's ideas for a rotary machine, equipped
with extremely small diameter cylinders and a means
for cutting each card in flight after printing, evoked
skeptical comments from his colleagues.
Persistent in his efforts to convince people of the
practicality of his idea, Mr. Carroll worked long hours
in a small corner lab at the Endicott plant. His first
model raised the card production rate to 400 a minute.
By 1932, a new model solved the problems of ink drying
and high speed cutting, and boosted card production
further.
Although IBM engineers have continued to improve the
machine, today's Supplies
Division card manufacturing machines still operate
on time basic principles of Mr. Carroll's invention.
In addition, in recent years, more than 30 other firms
have been given the right to use Mr. Carroll's patents
to manufacture cards and card manufacturing machines.
The fact that the genius of one man has found such widespread
application throughout the card industry is perhaps
the best tribute that can be paid him.
Although he is best remembered for his tremendous work
in card manufacturing, Mr. Carroll also pioneered developments
in the field of accounting machines and computers.
His "unit counter" was a small electromechanical
device that acted as a single adding wheel. It accumulated
and totaled long columns of figures. Combined with C.
D. Lake's electrical transfer circuitry, it became the
basis of the arithmetic apparatus incorporated in IBM's
accounting machines.
Another Carroll development of tremendous impact on
IBM's data processing machines was time "compensating
carriage." Combined with a card-controlled accounting
machine, it made possible the direct preparation and
immediate distribution of bills, checks, vouchers, and
other types of individual records.
It marked IBM's transition from statistical to accounting
applications. For the first time, a completely automatic
accounting machine was able to read card records and
prepare continuous form printed documents without manual
intervention.
Fred Carroll played a significant role in automating
"the world's largest bookkeeping job." The
special machine he designed for the Social Security
Administration was an ingenious combination of pneumatic,
mechanical and, for the first time in IBM history, photo-electric
sensing apparatus. Mr. Carroll was not an electronics
engineer, but he had the foresight to recognize the
potential of electronically controlled devices at an
early date.
Mr. Carroll is remembered by his associates as a man
who repeatedly combined the rare talents of a technical
genius with those of a farsighted businessman. He approached
every problem determined to develop a machine completely
feasible from two viewpoints: engineering and economics.
Fred Carroll lived very simply. He was liberal in his
charitable gifts, particularly to hospitals and to the
activities of youth in his community. Though he had
no children of his own, he dedicated himself wholeheartedly
to the Boys Club.
During his lifetime, he earned a degree of respect
from his supervisors, his colleagues, and his subordinates
which has rarely been equaled by anyone in the IBM engineering
organization.
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