IBM’s S/360 mainframe

On this day in 1964 IBM unveiled its System/360 (S/360) family of mainframe computers. The S/360 was designed to be flexible: Customers could buy as much computing power as they needed, or they could buy the most basic model and upgrade later. The S/360 was also designed with science applications in mind. Here’s a quote from a 1965 brochure that describes the Model 44: “IBM System/360 Model 44 draws its special talent for scientific computing from a combination of fast parallel binary operations; short-, long-, and variable-length precision floating point arithmetic; and its FORTRAN programming support. “The speed and power of the Model 44 are evidenced in its one microsecond memory access time and its 32 data bit word parallel arithmetic and data paths. Also, the Model 44 has 16 general-purpose registers in which calculations can be handled at microsecond speeds or implemented in optional 250-nanosecond Solid Logic Technology circuits.”

Date in History: 7 April 1964