Show me your old manuals!

December 8, 2020 11:13 AM

I like to collect interesting images and digital documents for inspiration and education. Lately I'm on an old user manual kick, but finding them is slow going (especially during the pandemic). It occurred to me that Metafilter has just the kind of people who would fondly remember (or collect!) cool user manuals. My target is machinery and computer manuals created between 1970-1990, but honestly if it's a neat manual I wanna look at it. Links, PDFs, images, vague memories/leads, I'll take em all.

Thank you in advance for indulging my digital hoarding.

posted by Stoof to Technology (18 answers total)

The Library of Congress has a database of manuals.
posted by sacrifix at 11:16 AM on December 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

The Internet Archive has almost a million scanned old manuals.
posted by GuyZero at 11:23 AM on December 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

Best answer: This is a little random, but the user's manual for the WW2 Tiger I tank is unusual and interesting (scroll through the manual with translations at the bottom of linked page).
posted by Rumple at 11:34 AM on December 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

Best answer: How about pinball machine manuals and schematics? For these, check out ipdb.org.

For example, "Space Mission" that came out in 1976 (https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2253). On this page you can see a lot of information, including pictures and manuals. For the manuals, look for the "Documentation" section, where there are links to pdfs of the instruction manual and, separately, the schematic diagram.

If you don't have anywhere specific in mind to start, perhaps start with the top ten lists on the homepage.
posted by bruinfan at 11:47 AM on December 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Well, if you want to learn how to fly I have a copy of the "Professional Manual of Flight," copyright 1972, published by Jeppesen for the Cessna Pilot Center (no ISBN). It's a training reference for getting your commercial pilot license. A brief flip through the pages right now makes me think most if not all of the information is also freely available on the FAA's website in the "Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge" or PHAK.

Also not exactly a manual, but if you like things like Jane's All the Worlds Aircraft I also have a copy of "The Aircraft Year Book" for 1937, published by the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America (also no ISBN). From the dust jacket (or really the only part that's still surviving, since someone jammed it in the book as a bookmark) - "Here you will find a comprehensive analysis of the present trend in aviation, a forecast of developments during 1937, the complete story of aviation in the United States, the Army Air Corps, Air Forces of the Navy, The Flying Coast Guard, Governmental Activities in Aeronautics, State Aviation, Air Lines of the Unites States, Notable Flights, Private Flying, Aerial Service Operations, Airways and Airports, Education and Training, New Things in the Air - the story of aircraft engineering and manufacturing." It has lots of nice pictures and technical drawings.

Aircraft manuals (especially for trainers) are readily available online, either originals or reprints. Key words to search are either "aircraft information manual" or "pilot operating handbook."
posted by backseatpilot at 11:57 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Here's a huge repository of camera manuals.
posted by gregr at 11:57 AM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Not a manual, but a catalog of scientific equipment from Dietzgen. I had a summer job in the Dietzgen building on Fullerton in Chicago, and I bought this exact catalog at a vintage shop outside Austin TX. It's pretty cool.
posted by adamrice at 12:25 PM on December 8, 2020

Best answer: Hifiengine.com has an infinite number of stereo owner's and service manuals. Vinylengine.com has them for turntables.
posted by Slinga at 1:01 PM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: My manuals of choice are for vintage sewing machines -- the Singer support site has a lot of old scans and OCRed versions for models going all the way back to the 19th century. There's also a secret menu of manuals for brands which are now owned by the same parent company as Singer, including models which long predate these mergers, so for example it's a great place to look for vintage White manuals.

(There used to be a much larger public collection of manuals and parts charts for both domestic and industrial Singer models -- I'm not sure how public it was intended to be, but the directory listings were visible. The server went offline a few years ago, leaving a mess of confusion and linkrot. Some of those manuals are mirrored elsewhere and last I checked they were still accessible through the wayback machine, but I'm glad Past Me was paranoid enough to spider the whole site.)
posted by confluency at 1:21 PM on December 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

The VintageMachinery.org web site is devoted to information on the history, restoration and use of vintage woodworking machinery. Compiled through the generous contributions of content by thousands of dedicated members

A lot of the information is older than your time period but then again a lot of machines produced in the 50s were sold essentially unchanged for decades. The site is split up by manufacturer but for each there is a good collection of manuals amongst other materials.
posted by Mitheral at 2:26 PM on December 8, 2020

They're not exactly manuals, but the device-specific instructions found on the pages of the online pre-computer technical museum are a fascinating dive into how these different mechanical (and electro-mechanical) calculating machines were operated, from a long time ago, up through the beginning of your timeframe (70s and 80s).
posted by dkg at 2:54 PM on December 8, 2020

Best answer: While a lot of it is in the Internet Archive, bitsavers.org is a huge resource. How about:
* AEG Telefunken TR440 programming manual (1971)
* Ball Brothers' CRT manual (1979) - they made many arcade machine screens
* Bendix G20 System Introduction (1961)
* Burroughs B6700 handbook (1971)
* ICL 1904A training manual (1972 - likely from when my dad worked for them)
* Cray X-MP functional definition (1988)
* Votrax SC-01 Speech Synthesizer (1980 - it was the crap one in those talking early arcade games)
* Ohio Superboard manual (1978)
* Olivetti M24 Theory of Operation (1984)
* Soroban Data paper tape brochure (196x)
* SEL 72 Ref Manual (1972)
* Unisys U5000 Unpacking Guide (1988)
* DEC PDP-8 Small Computer Handbook (1973)

While not manuals, the Hewlett-Packard Journal is filled with good things. 1960s-80s USA West hardware engineers' fashion choices were quite bold.
posted by scruss at 3:07 PM on December 8, 2020

Early Mac manuals are works of art.
posted by 8603 at 4:01 PM on December 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

NM-156 Reciprocating Emu Press, as seen on Metafilter
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 5:36 PM on December 8, 2020

odd historical artifact, WWII German Tank manuals, nsfw.
posted by ovvl at 6:26 PM on December 8, 2020

I assume you know about ManualsLib?

Every time I buy an old keyboard on Craigslist with inscrutable functions, this is where I find a nicely scanned manual for it.
posted by Beardman at 7:57 PM on December 8, 2020

Best answer: Back in 1984, Epson really wanted you to know how to get the best out of your dot matrix printer. Hence their two volume set Epson FX-series user manual volume 1: Tutorial and Epson FX-series user manual volume 2: Reference. These came with every printer.

(Epson's later machines are less interesting. Their POS printers have manuals covered by NDA, so you're not expected to fiddle with them.)
posted by scruss at 7:15 AM on December 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This came up today: 1964 Dartmouth BASIC Manual.

Starting FORTH | FORTH, Inc can be found here.

The oldest things I currently have are a 1984 4.2 BSD Manual (oh, wow, man pages and papers and chapters on specific commands and tools all typeset via troff in this thick plastic spiral bound book). I still occasionally flip through this for some ancient questions. And a 1978 K&R. These I recently saved from being dumpstered. The old things I've lost along the way... well never mind.
posted by zengargoyle at 4:31 PM on December 17, 2020