Now that the Corona disaster is over (or so it is thought), I am getting more and more opportunities to go on business trips here and there. Kyushu, Kansai, Tokai, Tohoku…I even went to Kofu the other day, although it wasn’t for work. If the trip is as far away as Kyushu, I will take an airplane, but most of the time I go by train.
Nowadays, it is rather easy to reserve a seat on the Shinkansen and limited express trains via the Internet, and I can use my IC card or smart phone to board the train with a “pi-pi” instead of issuing paper tickets, so I rarely have to wait in line at the station counter to buy a ticket. Maybe Shinosuke Tachikawa’s famous rakugo story, “Midorino no madoguchi” (the ticket counter), will gradually become obsolete. That’s sad, isn’t it?
As I was thinking about this while pulling out my nose hairs, it occurred to me. In the days when there was no computer system, how did they sell tickets for reserved seats on the ex. JNR once upon a time?
I asked Dr. Google and found out that they were doing something amazing like this.
Paper ledgers, telephones, and human searches. How great the old timers were!
And, as one would expect, this was a limited system, so computers were introduced here for the first time in February 1960, when the famous MARS system went into operation. I finally came to the title of this article when I learned that the history of this area is the subject of exhibits and explanations at various museums.
I decided to go to the National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno to see the MARS system exhibit.
This is what a corner of the “Computer” exhibit on the second floor of the Earth Pavilion (New Wing) looks like.
This is an illustration of a ticket counter staff operating a MARS reservation terminal. The “computers from the past” in the back are mixed with the explanation of other exhibits, so it is better to see them as “images”.
This alone might be enough to make you say “hmmm” and that’s it, but the important part of this exhibit is this, which is hidden behind the staff member.
The auxiliary input device on the desk behind him. There is an open slot above the rugged mechanical device into which a stamp-shaped block is inserted.
If you zoom in and look closely, there are three slots: “train,” “boarding station,” and “alighting station”. On the left side are boxes containing blocks for train names (such as Hikari 307 and Hitachi 2), which are handled by this terminal. The staff member in charge probably operated only the date at hand, and then quickly inserted these three blocks into the device, and the information on available seats would be returned to the terminal. Then he/she would say, “Yes, it’s available,” and enter the reservation. That must be it.
Isn’t this input I/F really emotional?
What’s that lever on the bottom right of the slot? I’ve seen something similar to this, and you know those old pop-up toasters that had a lever that forced the bread out in this shape? I’m sure it’s a lever to remove the three inserted blocks at once by pushing it down, just like a toaster, so that the three blocks can be removed at once. I’m pretty confident about this theory, but what do you think?
Oh, what a lovely machine from the Showa period!
This MARS system was made by Hitachi, Ltd. I heard that they tried it and found that it “worked unexpectedly well,” so they rushed to expand the scope of installation. The museum’s exhibit includes all trains of the Tokaido Shinkansen as well as some limited express trains of local lines, so I guess this is a scene of terminal operation after the introduction of the system had progressed considerably.
If you go to the Railway Museum in Kyoto, you can see the MARS system, which was greatly developed after this (like the terminal that flaps and inserts the pin!). ), I have a new ambition in my heart.
Now, enough about MARS,
I visited the National Museum of Nature and Science for the first time in my life. I’ll tell you about it next time.
