Stabsstelle (advisory board)

No, this object is not a flute or an organ... In German you can make a pun with the word stabsstelle: stab means stick and also staff; stelle means position.

Our computing centres was responsible for coordinating all IT activity in the Oerlikon Buehrle group. Hence I used the pun to visualise the importance of our company. Since the 'power' of our computing centre grew exponentially in those times, the length of the sticks in this object are measured with a logarithmic scale. The stick to the right has marks at 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100. The unit for measuring the power of a computer in those times (1986) was Mips (millions instructions per second).

You can see that at the time of presenting this gift to my boss the coputers had a power of 20 Mips. The sticks to the far left are smaller than 1 (Mips) and hence do not project out of the base... The first (hidden) stick is for 1976 when the computing centre started with an IBM 360/40 which then costed about 3 Millions CHF.

The manger of our computing centre thanked warmly for the gift which he placed on his desk for years!

Expenditure of human labor:: 2h