IBM 604

Jerome Fine replies: Figure 3 sure looks similar to what I remember of an IBM 650 that I used in 1960, some ten years later. The reader/punch was still the same. I also feel that the actual IBM 650 unit was similar in looks on the outside to the IBM 604 shown. But inside, there must have been a huge difference. The IBM 650 allowed 3 drums (if I remember correctly - or maybe one big one that was 3 times the size of the minimum variety). In any case, the system I first cut my real computing teeth on (I had had some acquaintance with computers about two years prior when I worked for an insurance company during the summer) was an IBM 650 unit with 6000 words (10 decimal digits each) which could represent either one instruction or one integer/floating point number. The address range for the words was 0000 to 5999 and the op code in each instruction was the first two decimal digits (no new fangled binary in an IBM 650 at this point). Two operands followed with the first being a data value and the second operand always being the address of the next instruction. SOAP (Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program) was used to place the next instruction on the drum in a location based on how long the operation took and where the drum would be in that time. Obviously, the experienced programmer place all inner loops at the very start of the program with both initiation code and termination code coming at the end when it did not matter if all the best locations had been used. The IBM 650 I work with also had 60 words (address 9000 to 9059) of directly addressable storage - I guess in vacuum tube circuits. These were almost always used for data with only the smallest of inner loops being place there for speed. Both input and output for the IBM 650 was punched cards - a 704 was used to list the SOAP output at one instruction per card and another program converted that deck of cards to more than one instruction per card - either 3 or 5 or 7 if I remember correctly - with the maximum being 7 (since 7 * 10 = 70 and 4 columns were reserved for for the load address) and each card in the program deck was numbered in the last 4 columns - I think In any case, as slow as the IBM 650 was by today's standards, it was very fast compared to a mechanical calculating machine that took seconds to do a multiply and tens of seconds to do a division if that were even possible - could a Frieden do a division? What this reply is about is that even ten years later (1960 as opposed to the depicted systems in 1948), the pace of change was still slow and IBM was still THE IBM and the seven dwarfs were just starting to poke up their collective heads. Very little changed between 1950 to 1960 except that the stage was being set for the changes that were to come by 1970 by which time transistors were totally dominant and mass??? storage had arrived in the form of core memory measured in KBytes. The growth seems to have been exponential ever since. Now that was just 40 years ago. What will computers be like in 2040? Those youngsters whose first computer was a Pentium can't even begin to realize how far commercial computing has gone in just 50 years. While the HAL in 2001 may be another 50 years or even a hundred years, eventually there will be programs that will begin to rival the lower level of normal human administrative functions which do not require any imagination and which a canned program will be able to manage in a competent manner. But this last paragraph is the future and OT. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine