6 Nov
2005
6 Nov
'05
1:04 p.m.
...
Not sure if spooling was the designed purpose of the
1401,
but there was an
official IBM acronym for the 1401-7090 type combination.
But there were plenty of standalone 1401's.
SPOOL actually means Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On-Line, so that is
not the correct term to use in this case. That refers to using a disk drive
as a buffer for record oriented I/O devices so that program execution is
separated from the slower I/O devices. The 1401 was an off-line system for
card to tape input & tape to punch/print output.
But you are definitely correct that the 1401 sold way beyond IBM's
expectations. Once a few people got a look at it and saw how easy it was to
program it took off like a rocket. IIRC they sold in the thousands, most
with only card & print. There was no official OS that I ever saw, but
several I/O packages.
...
Gil