C-3s and Model Ts: The Machines behind Two Lovely Farewells
The C-3 cumulative recorder was the Model T of behavior science—simple, cheap, and game-changing.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lattal (2021) tells the story of the C-3 cumulative recorder. He treats it like the Model T Ford of behavior science.
The paper is a short history, not an experiment. It shows how one sturdy machine shaped an entire field.
What they found
The C-3 was cheap, simple, and everywhere. Like the Model T, it let thousands of users join a movement.
The machine outlived its own inventors. Labs kept it running even after computers arrived.
How this fits with other research
Asano et al. (2012) found an earlier 1952 Keio recorder. That device is the missing link between Skinner’s first sketch and the C-3 you see in old photos.
Lattal (2004) charts the full rise-and-fall of the recorder family. Lattal (2021) zooms in on the C-3 as the peak model, the one that became standard.
Fournier et al. (2004) show the phrase “cumulative record” existed before Skinner. The words and the machine grew famous together, but they have separate birth certificates.
Why it matters
When you graph data today, you still copy the C-3’s slope. Seeing response rate as a rising line began with this machine. Remember that legacy when you teach new staff why the graph looks that way.
Get CEUs on This Topic — Free
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
Show your team an old cumulative record photo before opening your digital graph—link past to present in one minute.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
B. F. Skinner’s 1976 editorial “Farewell my LOVELY,” eulogizing the passing of the cumulative record as a primary form of data analysis, borrowed its title from a 1936 E. B. White essay of the same name. In it, White, a well-known 20th century essayist and children’s book author, eulogized the Model T Ford. This article considers the parallels between the machine behind the cumulative record—the cumulative recorder—and White’s Model T. The cumulative recorder considered for comparison is the Ralph Gerbrands Company Model C-3, widely considered by scientists of the time to be the best of the cumulative recorders that proliferated between the 1950s and the 1990s. On a much more modest scale, the C-3 became as popular, visible, distinct, and important in research laboratories devoted, but not limited, to the experimental analysis of behavior as was the Model T on the roads of early 20th century America. Not only were there parallels in manufacture and marketing, but, more importantly, in reliability, durability and ease of function of these two machines that changed the respective practices and culture of behavioral psychology and the world.
Perspectives on Behavior Science, 2021 · doi:10.1007/s40614-021-00300-3