From the Archive: Early History of Technology at Great American

The way we work is constantly changing along with the technology we use. The expansion of technology in the past decades has not only provided new tools, but also changed the way offices look, how businesses organize themselves and much more. No matter the size of the company, technology has become one of the most important factors in a company’s success. Great American has seen the importance of technology since the beginning.

In the early years of Great American, technology was not a large area of focus because virtually everything was done by hand. In the early 20th century, typewriters were the primary machines used in the office. It was common to see women working in typing pools in American companies, particularly by the 1950s and 1960s.

Typewriter Photo — *Great American employees in the 1950s with their typewriters.*

When computers first appeared on the scene, punch cards were a widely used means of inputting data. These paper cards had holes punched by a machine to represent computer data and instructions. Early computer programmers would write a program by hand, then convert the program to several punched cards using a punch card machine. The programmer would then take the stack of cards to a computer and feed the cards into a card reader to input the program.

Key Punch Photo — *Great American employees in the 1960s working on key punch equipment*

Recognizing the value and importance of technology to its business, Great American made an organizational change in 1958 launching the first version of the IT department called the Electronic Data Processing Department. For months, a committee had studied the proposition of establishing this department before the decision was finally made and approved by senior management. In its first few years, the department focused heavily on accounting functions, but the goal of the department was to ultimately use electronic equipment in areas beyond accounting.

By 1962, Great American was installing the IBM 7070 data processing system. The moment was captured in this industry trade publications at the time. The process had started months before the moving van arrived. It took close to 9,000 customer engineers to install and test and system.

Great American was considered to be a leader in the industry with respect to powerful up-to-date data processing equipment. By the late 1960s, Great American’s computer workload had outgrown the capacity of the old machines and management felt that “current priority projects require the latest in third generation hardware." In 1965, the company installed one of IBM’s “newest, sleekest units, the S/360 model 65.”

When surplus time was temporarily available on these new machines, Great American also found it profitable to rent time on them to other companies.

1968 Photo — *Great American employee in the 1960s working on the IBM’s newest, recently installed model*

By the 1980s, computers were available to employees. Former Great American President Gary Gruber remembered when the office got more computerized in the 1980s: “We had IBMs and we used to have two or three sitting in a cube and you literally signed up to use them. So if you wanted to do your work, you had to sign up. You know, I'm going to take from 8:00 to 9:00 or from 10:00 to 11:00.“

Photo Hub — *Employees in the Cincinnati office in the 1980s*

A few years after, virtually all employees would either have terminals or personal computers at their workstations, enabling everyone to work more efficiently and provide better, faster service to agents and insureds.

1980 2 Women at desk — *Great American employees in the 1980s with their personal computers*

Interested in seeing how Great American grew into the company it is today? Visit our Company Story to see why our yesterdays tell an important story about our tomorrow.