The Automated Rail Way

In about 1961, Union Pacific began using the phrase “automated rail way” in its advertising and on its box cars. The letters on the boxcars were often in eight different colors, though this notepad only uses two. Since “rail” was always underlined, the phrase was meant to distinguish rail from other ways, such as trucks or barges, not that Union Pacific was a railway (its corporate name was Union Pacific Railroad).

Click image to download a 168-KB PDF of this notepad.

Automated probably meant something different in 1961 than it does today. Union Pacific leased its first modern computer, an IBM 705, in 1958. Extremely primitive compared with, say, an iPhone, it used vacuum tubes instead of solid state transistors, filled at least one large room, and had the equivalent of what we would call about 80 kilobytes of RAM. UP used it for payroll, accounting, and inventory control.

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Click image to download a 200-KB PDF of this envelope.

I acquired some copies of this envelope from the same source as the notepad. However, they obviously don’t go together and I suspect the envelopes are older as the timetables and brochure that came from the same source go back to 1950.


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