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Home , IBM, IBM (atoms), Keypunch, Speedcoding

ITWAS TO HAVE BEENTHE NUCLEAR AGE.

7 1 1 THE EVOLUTION OF IBM COMPUTERS

Wheels- and------levers------The beginning of data processing 'This apparatus works un- erringly as the mills of the gods, but beats them hollow as to speed. ' -Electrical Engineer November 11,1891 In the 1880s, the U.S. Census Bureau faced a crisis. It was clear that by the time it could count the 1890 census the An original Holler- ith . This data would be obsolete. So mechanical device, the Bureau held a contest to The IBM 080 card along with a tabu- see if it could find a faster sorter was a fa- lator and card miliar object to four sorter, enabled the way to tabulate the results. decades of office + US.Government to Dr. , a young workers. It was still The Hollerith count the 1890 being manufac- tabulator relied on census twice as engineer in the Census Bu- tured in the 1950s. electromagnet- fast as the 1880 reau, won hands down. He in- ically operated census even vented an electromechani- counters. From that though the popula- central invention tion had grown by cal machine activated by emerged progres- 25 percent. The punched cards. The holes in In 1941, this IBM sively faster tabu- Hollerith concept, 040 unit converted lating and com- while improved the cards represented vital telegraph paper panion machines. upon through the statistics. Hollerith said the tape directly into Introduced in 1925, years, remained punched cards. the IBM 080 card the basis of the idea occurred to him when It was the first ma- sorter processed information proc- he saw a railroad conductor chine to do so. 400 punched cards essing industry With the 040, the per minute. The through World use a ticket punch. In 1896, U.S. Air Corps ob- IBM 031 keypunch, War II. Hollerith founded the Tabu- tained summary introduced in 1933, lating Machine Company, totalsin inventory of equipment at its was one of the first machines one of three firms which later depots daily in- to permit punch- became International Busi- stead of annually. ing of letters as well as numbers ness Machines Corporation. into cards. The IBM 405 tabulator, . . In 1944, Haward's introduced in 1934, Dr. Howard Aiken could add or sub- and IBM completed tract 150 punched five years of work cards per minute. -.---- on the Mark I, the largest electro- mechanical calcu- lator ever built. It had 3,300 relays and weighed 5 tons. It could mul-

With , thousands of times faster

Electromechanical machines were too pedestrian for the swift-paced postwar world. Users wanted speed, and the responded to their demand. Vacuum tubes, flipped on and off like switches, could count thou- sands of times faster than moving mechanical parts. But the story doesn't lie in vac- uum tubes alone. It lies in the creation of computer sys- tems that incorporated not only vacuum tubes, but also other advancing technol- ogies. Between 1946 and 1952, a series of electronic calculators and computers emerged in rapid succession: ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, the IBM Selec- tive Sequence Electronic Cal- culator, The Institute for Ad- vanced Study computer, UNI- VAC for the Census Bureau, and the IBM 701-to name a few. In 1946, IBM vacuum tube machines could multiply two 10-digit numbers in 1/40 of a second; by 1953, in 1/2000 of a second.

The IBM 604 was the first electronic calculator to supplant electromechanical office equipment on any scale. It was also the first electronic machine that could be easily repaired. Without tools, service engineers could remove one tube and its associated parts (shown at top) and plug in another. The array of tubes (below) were used in a later computer.

C The IEM 701 could add a typewritten column of 10-digit numbers as tall as the Statue of Lib- erty in about one second. In one hour it could Solve a problem in air- craft wing design The 13M Selective that might have Sequence El=- tahan engineer .tronic Calculator, seven years with a ~ompletedin 1947, desk calculator. contained both Announced in vacuum tubes and 1952, the 701 was relays. It was mare a portent of the than 100 times larger, faster faster than the machines yet to Mark I. It was the come. first IBM stored program machine, and it could select its own calcylating sequence by m&i- fying its own stored instructions-thus, its name,

The vacuum tape column, invented by IBM in 1950, controlled the reel- ing and unreeling of tape and kept it from snapping. Vacuum columns are at left and right, under reels. + 1BM's Naval Ord- nance Research Calculator was the most powerful computer of its day back in 1954. It had 9,000 vacuum tubes. When IBM intro- duced its 305 RAMAC (for ran- dom access) in Better ways to find 1956, data proc- information fast essing leapfrogged into the future. Magnetically The vacuum tube vastly in- coated aluminum creased the computer's cal- disks (such as miniature replica culating speed. But it did little at left) stored to improve the efficiency of volumes of data on concentric tracks. two other critical aspects of In afraction of a the computer's configuration: second, a read/ storage and memory. The write mechanism found the right early vacuum tube computers magnetic spot and stored data on punched cards retrieved data from any point on the or tape and drums and relied disk. The RAMAC's on cathode ray tubes or 50 spinning disks contained five mil- drums for active memory. lion characters of Punched cards were slow and information. not rewritable. Tape could be inefficient because of the time taken in reeling and unreeling. Cathode ray tubes were ex- pensive and unreliable. The urgent demand for faster and cheaper storage and memory devices stimulated in magnet- 1' ics -magnetic disks and Current-carrying drums for storage, magnetic wires that pass through iron oxide cores for memory, and better cores magnetize materials for better magnetic them clockwise or counterclockwise. tapes. Cores switched from one magnetic +Vacuum tubes and state to the other core memories in millionths of a were combined second. One mag- in the mammoth netic direction computer, SAGE, represents a zero, built by IBM under the other, a one the direction of in the computer's M.I.T. SAGE was binary code. In- The IBM 650 was used as part of the ventors outside a widely used U. S, air defense. IBM originally de- general-purpose The 1134017 com- veloped the donut- computer for busi- puter, containing shaped cores for ness, industry, 58,000 tubes, memory, and IBM and universities. processed data perfected the When introduced, transmitted from a method for making it processed data radar network in them. The com- on punched cards. real-time. That is, pany adapted pill- Later users could the data was proc- making machinery add magnetic tapes essed as rapidly to produce them by and disks. The 650 as it was received. the millions. had a magnetic .

Transistors Smaller, faster, more reliable

The transistor was invented at Bell Laboratories in 1947. But it's often a long road from invention to application. IBM and the indus- try invested nearly a decade in research to perfect a mass production and testing proc- ess and to incorporate the solid-state technology- which the transistor repre- sented-into the computer. The transistor was only 1/200 the size of the bulky vacuum tube. It was smaller, faster, and could be pack- aged tightly-an electrical im- pulse had less distance to travel. And because it was composed of a solid sub- stance, it was far more rugged and reliable. In operation, it generated much less heat than a vacuum tube. In the late 1950s, more sophisti- cated computers arrived- ones that employed transis- tors for arithmetic, ferrite cores for memory, and mag- netic disks or tapes for stor- age. Now the computer could multiply two 10-digit numbers in 1/100,000 of a second. IBM built the in- tolerances as Transistors and dustry's first fully close as 112000 printed circuits automatic tran- of an inch, the were combined sistor production line produced and on cards like this. line at its Pough- tested 1,800 tran- The cards were keepsie plant in sistors per hour. plugged into large 1959. Holding to frames, or gates, -b which swung out STRETCH,built by for maintenance. IBM in 1960, waa the mast powerful computer of its day. Its 150,000 transistors could

instruction at a time and prepare itself for future

Introduced in sized uaw$-rmk- 1959, IBM de- in0 it by far the livefed more than most popular 10,000 of these computer up to transistorked that time. IBM 140t corn- puters, many to small and medium- The disk pgck. the same time, one IBM introduced IBM tape reel storage units with could store 17 such removabk million characters disks in 1982. of infarmation. A !3ah dl& pack tape unit could contslined well over rwd and store the 2 million charac- equivalent of 1,I00 ters, and the user punched cards per could switch pecks second. with ease. At about

J9s computing In 1883, the "train" sp-de inar-ed boosted so did pprinting printing speeds to spesds. The 1,100 lines per '%hain" primter minute. Rather then produced600 lines riding on a chain, per minute In typefaces now 1939,a tourtold rode on a steel increase over track. the earlier most widely used IBM printing method.

&ERE, the airline reservation system, was the first large commercial com- puter network that operated on-line in real-time. That is, changes in schedules and reservations were recorded as they occurred. significantly te- duced the time ' needed to make msmvations. SABRE was devel- oped by IBM for atter sixywsof joint research. It The Apollo moon- state electronic went into operation shot was simulated computer provided in 1962. many hundreds of the speed neces- times on an IBM sary to prove tra- Systm/3@0Model jectoly calculations 75 before actual and to train the flight, Thk solid- flight crew. First 'family' of computers

The early transistorized com- puters advanced the state of computing technology. But they had one important draw- back: They weren't compat- ible. Users often had difficulty switching from one of computer to another without rewriting their programs. Pe- ripheral devices designed for one computer often wouldn't work with another. What users really needed was a family of compatible computers in which peripherals and pro- grams could be interchanged. Realizing this, IBM-at con- siderable risk-replaced its computer product line. In 1964, the company came out with System/360-the first family of compatible comput- ers, ranging from small to large. As first delivered to users, there were five central proc- essing units. The smallest processor could perform 33,000 additions per second; the largest, 2,500,000 per second. Variations among proces- sors gave users 19 combina- (Continued on page 14) tions of graduated oalculiiting speeds and memory capacity. As users added applica- tions, they could add or re- place processors without rewriting program. With car- tain limitations, instructions for one model ran on the others. All five processors worked with most of the 44 attach- ments. Users could select the combination of disk or tape units, printers, communica- tion devices,. and other ,at- How the computer tachments that best served their needs. A computer may be a single machine, but is often a con- figuration of machines de- signed and programmed tio work together, as a system. When we of a computer system, we should think of the conversion of data into electronic signals sent back and forth among the particu- lar machines that compose the system. The machines are connected by cables and of- ten linked with telephone lines to distant locations. t lem: positioning wlrn System1360 The Model 91 was transistors IBM's most power- came Solid Logic 2811000-inch Technology (SLT). square on the BMdeveloped module. Vacuum echniques for Its speed ranged needles did the up to 16 million job. SLT was additions a second. highly reliable. Statistically, an SLT module would run 33 million hours on average without failure.

Storage Central Processing We can enter data directly into the Once we enter data, we need a place to Suppose a stack of magnetic disks computer with the keyboard of a type- store it so that it's readily available when contains a complete company payroll. writw terminal similar to those used by we want to use it. The To make out the payroll checks, each in bank tellers and airline reservation clerks. itself is a permanent storage device. It the proper amount with the proper deduc- Or we may enter data through a card holds information that can be used over tions, we must transfer data from the reader that converts holes in punched and over again. But today we store most disks to the cards into electrical impulses. Did you data magnetically on disk or tape. (CPU), which consists of memory and ever notice those oddly shaped numerals We can pack data quite densely arithmeticllogic circuits. at the bottom of checks? They're printed in this manner--as many as several A device called a channel automatically in magnetic , and another kind of million "" of data per square inch. moves payroll data and related application linput device can sense those shapes programs from disk storage to active and convert them into electronic signals. memory. Once the data is in memory, the arithmetic/logic section takes over and performs the necessary steps in proper sequence to make out the paychecks. Once the payroll transactions are com- pleted, the data is sent back from memory to disk storage. There is a constant trans- fer of data between memory and storage.

Output High-speed printers-activated by elec- tronic impulses- can print checks, invoices, tables, even report cards at up to 2,000 lines per minute on impact printers. A student sitting at a remote terminal can "converse" with the computer; that is, query the computer and obtain a type- written answer in seconds-provided, of course, the proper information and instructions were entered in the first place. We can also obtain output on screens similar to television sets. 4 Solid Logic Td- nology simplified pmduetion end maintenance. h- inated cards hold- ing half-inch rnod- ules were plugged into foot-long cir- cuit boards. Boards, in turn, were mounted on "gates" on the computer frame- work.

The evolution of

When a computer makes out a payroll m calculates the orbit of a satellite, itl appears to have accomplished some- thing remarkably complex. Actudly, it has merely executed in sequence a large number of simple steps as di- rected hy a set af instructions alled a program, which is written by a per- son called a . The com- puter has no mind vf its own. It only does what the programmer tells it to do. I in the early days, we had to rear- Small and rugged, this onboard 59- IBM range the wiring in the computer every ~oundcomouter wrote programs time we wanted it to perform a differ- helped guide that contained ent task. Subsequently, ~omputer~ Gemini space- 1.5 million in- were designed so that b- flights through structione for the operating rendezvous, ground-based structions could be stmd and manip docking, and computers that ulated within the computer itmlf. splashdown. For mtrolkid the Today's computer handless marry guidance and na- Apotlo space operations concurrently. Consequent- vigation, IBM de- flights. veloped another ly, it must be programmd so that It family of comput- can calculate, transfe data, recsrd ers, called 4 Pi. input, and generate output-all at the In many applica- same time. FQ~that rewn, cmtrol tions, magnetic prcrgrarns-which ~oardlnatethework drums were used for storage be- as it flows through the eomputer- cause of durability, grow in irnporkncs as computing size, and quicker speeds rise. They ham been called access time. the ''glue" that holds the system to- gether. When IBM introduced its Sys- t~m/360,ffie operating was + Timely data be- came as important as capacity and speed. With the IBM 2314 disk storage system, any record on file could be updated in a fraction of a second.

ramming

every as critical as the Solid Logic would travel at 60 miles per hour in gramming language into machine lan- Technology. 3 hours, the instructions might look guage. like this: (an for Formula Translation) was one of the first high- level programming languages. De- veloped largely by IBM, it was based To understand programming, it on algebra plus a few rules of gram- helps to understand how computers mar. caunt. When people process data, they use 10 digits and 26 letters. But when computers process data, they use only two digits-+ zero and a one. Why only two? Mainly because an electrical impulse exists or does not exist. Either a switch is on or it's off. By the mid-1950s, symbolic coding FORTRAN was developed mainly Think of the computer's vacuum reduced the programmer's task to to solve scientific problems. Subse- tubes or transistors in terms of light more workable dimensions. For ex- quently, a group of languages for bulbs. If the light ism, that represents ample, with Speedcoding, a complex business applications-COBOL, RPG, a one. If the light is off, that represents set of instructions might look like this: BASIC, and others-appeared. An- a zero. Thus, in one binary code, the other significant advance occurred capital letter J is represented by a with the development of APL (A Pro- string of eight light bulbs in the fol- gramming Language), which can be lowing order: 1101 0001. All numbers, learned in a few days. letters, and symbols in common usage can be represented in this way. These zeroes and ones constitute machine language. During the early Gradually, programmers devised 1950s, programmers had to commu- languages that more closely resem- nicate with the computer in machine bled English statements. A transla- Today researchers are busy trying bnguage-that is, in terms of zeroes tion program, simultaneously fed into to perfect techniques that will allow and ones. Thus, if they wanted the the computer, called a , con- laymen to instruct the computer in I;computer to calculate how far a train verted the statement written in a pro- their own words.

t In the eye of a chips mounted on needle, a chip %-inch modules, magnified appmxi- each pair of mod- mately5W times, ules containing cofttains 25 oir- more than 4,000 cubfor performing bits of data- arithmetic, Mth the same as 4,000 monolithic tech- cores. This mono- nology, system/ lithic memory wqs 370 computers chan more reliable ahd make millions of four times faster calcuIations a than the cow seeorid. memory it reptaced. In 1972, System/ 370 main memory used tiny silicon ' dust as IRM de- is diced into velqped advanced chips measured in rnanufaoturing fractions of inch=. methods for mag- Fimlly, chips are netic core mBm- mounted on single- ories and early or double-stackd transistor comput- ceramic modules ers, so if also was and encapsulated one of the pioneers in a proteatbe in developing pro- aluminum cover duction methode for placemenr in fw monolithic air- logiC/arithme#c cuitry. The tech- or memorv. nique begins by ~oday,thi engi- slicing a 2&-inch neer designs the diameter wafer circuitry wifh the from a silicon aid of a computer- ingot, Then thou- ized cathode ray sands of tiny eleo- tube display. The tronia devicras are computer checks formed on the the engineer's wafer by repmting design and drives various phoio- the photographic graphic, etching, system. and chemical proo- esses. Next, the C . The virtue of . monolithic cir- cuitry is clearly wldent in the IBM . 5100, intmduced f in 1975. It weighs - only 50 pounds. Portable, it can be , plugged into a wall socket.

t How fast is fast? than current com- IBM scientists have puter devices. The fabricated an switch is called a experimental elec- Josephson tunnel- tronic device that ing junction. can be switched

t ?' The IBM 3850 The laser, a unique Mass Storage source of pure System-a bee- and coherent hive of electronic light, and electro- activity. It con- photographic tains up to 472 printing are com- billion characters bined in the IBM of information. 3800 Printing Sub- Cartridges in each system, six times honeycomb faster than the contain magnetic company's fastest tape. On signal, system to date. The data on tape is printer can print transferred to 13,000 lines of disks, then to computer output computer mem- per minute. ory. Introduced in C System1370 Model 1975, the 3850 14Sthefirst gives quick and in- r" cornouter with expensive access monolithic tech- to vast files of nology for a full- data. t How small is IBM scientists are sized main mem- small? Current now utilizing a ory. Up to 262 fabrication meth- technique to re- memory cards ods rely on ultra- place light with held 262,000 char- violet light to draw electron beams- acters of data. Like the circuit lines. an even finer in- other Systemf370 With the process, strument for draw- models, it can act one can print the ing circuit lines. upon programs entire Bible--all written for earlier 1,250 pages of the Old and New System/370 ate Testaments-on a models possess How dense is technology virtual storage. dense? When called magnetic wafer 11/2 inches Composed of magnetic disks bubbles--still in square. innovations in were first intro- the research stage hardware and saft- duced, it was pos- -may increase ware, virtual stor- sible to pack 1,000 density even fur- age enables a bits of data per ther. Bubbles are programmer to square inch. Today tiny magnetic re- feel he has the the number is gions found in entire machine at several million. certain thin mag- his disposal. But another netic materials. Computers help get things done In the years ahead, we can expect computer usage to grow apace. Processors and data storage devices will have instant access to a vast store- house of information and computing power via remote terminals linked to data cen- ters via telephone lines or ra- dio waves. This is the new growing world of data net- works and data communica- tions-of computing on-line and in real-time. Indeed, sig- nificant examples are already evident.

Time-sharing al- lows many termi- nal users to the same data in the same computer system. Scientists and students can The investment gain access to the advisor checks the computer from current status of their own termi- customer port- nals as if each folios against were the only user quotations. A warehouse con- at a given time. With updated tains millions of data, he can make items. But inven- prudent and timely tory information is investment deci- kept up-to-the- sions. minute with temi- nals and computer files that record what has been shipped in and out. patient informatton

6r& with caw.

tian, fine oontrol. An IBM Watern/T respondsto &nuif -heat, light, hu-

r, Cheaper The chart shows how data processing costs and time have declined during the past two decades. It repre- sents a mix of about 1,700 computer operations, including payroll, discount computation, file maintenance, table lookup, and report preparation. Figures show costs of the period, not adjusted for inflation.

1955 1960 1965 Today

ost $14.54 $2.48 $.47 $.20

375 sec. 47 sec. 37 sec. 5 sec.

Vacuum tubes Transistors Solid Logic Monolithic memory Magnetic cores Channels Technology Monolithic logic Magnetic tapes Faster cores Large, fast disk files Virtual storage Faster tapes New channels Larger, faster disk Larger, faster files core memory New channels Faster tapes Advanced tapes

Stored program Overlapped input/ output Faster batch Batch processing processing operating systems Multiprogramming Batchlon-line processing

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