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IBM 650
The IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data-Processing Machine is an early digital computer produced by IBM in the mid-1950s. It was the first mass produced computer in the world. Almost 2,000 systems were produced, the last in 1962, and it was the first computer to make a meaningful profit. The first one was installed in late 1954 and it was the most-popular computer of the 1950s. The 650 was marketed to business, scientific and engineering users as a general-purpose version of the IBM 701 and IBM 702 computers which were for scientific and business purposes respectively. It was also marketed to users of unit record equipment, punched card machines who were upgrading from Unit record equipment#Calculating, calculating punches, such as the IBM 604, to computers. Because of its relatively low cost and ease of Computer programming, programming, the 650 was used to pioneer a wide variety of applications, from modeling submarine crew performance to teaching high school and college students c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drum Memory
Drum memory was a magnetic data storage device invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 in Austria. Drums were widely used in the 1950s and into the 1960s as computer memory. For many early computers, drum memory formed the main working memory of the computer. It was so common that these computers were often referred to as ''drum machines''. Some drums were also used as secondary storage as for example various IBM drum storage drives. Drums were displaced as primary computer memory by magnetic core memory, which offered a better balance of size, speed, cost, reliability and potential for further improvements. Drums in turn were replaced by hard disk drives for secondary storage, which were both less expensive and offered denser storage. The manufacturing of drums ceased in the 1970s. Technical design A drum memory or drum storage unit contained a large metal cylinder, coated on the outside surface with a ferromagnetic recording material. It could be considered the precu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM 7070
IBM 7070 was a decimal-architecture intermediate data-processing system that was introduced by IBM in 1958. It was part of the IBM 700/7000 series, and was based on discrete transistors rather than the vacuum tubes of the 1950s. It was the company's first transistorized stored-program computer. The 7070 was expected to be a "common successor to at least the 650 and the 705". The 7070 was not designed to be instruction set compatible with the 650, as the latter had a second jump address in every instruction to allow optimal use of the drum, something unnecessary and wasteful in a computer with random-access core memory. As a result, a simulator was needed to run old programs. The 7070 was also marketed as an IBM 705 upgrade, but failed miserably due to its incompatibilities, including an inability to fully represent the 705 character set; forcing IBM to quickly introduce the IBM 7080 as a "transistorized IBM 705" that was fully compatible. The 7070 series stored data in words con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unit Record Equipment
Starting at the end of the nineteenth century, well before the advent of electronic computers, data processing was performed using electromechanical machines collectively referred to as unit record equipment, electric accounting machines (EAM) or tabulating machines. Unit record machines came to be as ubiquitous in industry and government in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century as computers became in the last third. They allowed large volume, sophisticated data-processing tasks to be accomplished before electronic computers were invented and while they were still in their infancy. This data processing was accomplished by processing punched cards through various unit record machines in a carefully choreographed progression. This progression, or flow, from machine to machine was often planned and documented with detailed flowcharts that used standardized symbols for documents and the various machine functions. All but the earliest machines had high-speed mechanical feeders ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM 533
The IBM 533 Input-Output Unit, announced on July 2, 1953, was a punched card reader and punch that served as the primary input-output unit for the IBM 650 computer. It had two independent card paths, one for reading and one for punching. IBM cards were fed face down, 12-edge first. All 80 columns could be read and punched by the computer as numeric data, but alphanumeric reading was severely limited on the basic 650 and require special control panel wiring. The 533 could punch 100 cards per minute and had a set of read brushes downstream from the punch station that were used to verify proper punching. The card reader was similar to that on the IBM 402 accounting machine and could read 200 cards per minute. The 533 was controlled by a plugboard A plugboard or control panel (the term used depends on the application area) is an array of jacks or sockets (often called hubs) into which patch cords can be inserted to complete an electrical circuit. Control panels are sometime ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UNIVAC Solid State
The UNIVAC Solid State was a magnetic drum-based solid-state computer announced by Sperry Rand in December 1958 as a response to the IBM 650. It was one of the first computers to be (nearly) entirely solid-state, using 700 transistors, and 3000 magnetic amplifiers (FERRACTOR) for primary logic, and 20 vacuum tubes largely for power control. It came in two versions, the Solid State 80 (IBM-style 80-column cards) and the Solid State 90 (Remington-Rand 90-column cards). In addition to the "80/90" designation, there were two variants of the Solid State the SS I 80/90 and the SS II 80/90. The SS II series included two enhancements the addition of 1,280 words of core memory and support for magnetic tape drives. The SS I had only the standard 5,000-word drum memory described in this article and no tape drives. The memory drum had a regular access speed AREA and a FAST ACCESS AREA. 4,000 words of memory had one set of R/W heads to access. The programmer was required to keep track of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IBM 705
The IBM 700/7000 series is a series of large-scale (mainframe) computer systems that were made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series includes several different, incompatible processor architectures. The 700s use vacuum-tube logic and were made obsolete by the introduction of the transistorized 7000s. The 7000s, in turn, were eventually replaced with System/360, which was announced in 1964. However the 360/65, the first 360 powerful enough to replace 7000s, did not become available until November 1965. Early problems with OS/360 and the high cost of converting software kept many 7000s in service for years afterward. Architectures The IBM 700/7000 series has six completely different ways of storing data and instructions: *First scientific (36/18- bit words): 701 (Defense Calculator) *Later scientific (36-bit words, hardware floating-point): 704, 709, 7040, 7044, 7090, 7094 *Commercial (variable-length character strings): 702, 705, 7080 * 1400 series ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hancock Financial
John Hancock Life Insurance Company, U.S.A. is a Boston-based insurance company. Established April 21, 1862, it was named in honor of John Hancock, a prominent American Patriot. In 2004, John Hancock was acquired by the Canadian multinational life insurance company Manulife Financial. It operates as an independent subsidiary. The company and the majority of Manulife's U.S. assets continue to operate under the John Hancock name. History On April 21, 1862, the charter of the John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company was approved by John A. Andrew, governor of Massachusetts. There was not always a standardization for how the company name has been referenced. For example, a John Hancock advertisement from 1912 refers to the company as "John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company," but some John Hancock advertisements and newspaper articles from the 1930s refer to it as the "John Hancock Life Insurance Company." However, 1940s sources again refer to the company as the "John Hancock ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comptroller
A comptroller (pronounced either the same as ''controller'' or as ) is a management-level position responsible for supervising the quality of accounting and financial reporting of an organization. A financial comptroller is a senior-level executive who acts as the head of accounting, and oversees the preparation of financial reports, such as balance sheets and income statements. In most Commonwealth countries, the comptroller general, auditor general, or comptroller and auditor general is the external auditor of the budget execution of the government and of government-owned companies. Typically, the independent institution headed by the comptroller general is a member of the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions. In American government, the comptroller is effectively the chief financial officer of a public body. In business management, the comptroller is closer to a chief audit executive, holding a senior role in internal audit functions. Generally, the title ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Character Encoding
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmitted, and Computing, transformed using Digital electronics, digital computers. The numerical values that make up a character encoding are known as "code points" and collectively comprise a "code space", a "code page", or a "Character Map (Windows), character map". Early character codes associated with the optical or electrical Telegraphy, telegraph could only represent a subset of the characters used in written languages, sometimes restricted to Letter case, upper case letters, Numeral system, numerals and some punctuation only. The low cost of digital representation of data in modern computer systems allows more elaborate character codes (such as Unicode) which represent most of the characters used in many written languages. Character enc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Character (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language. Examples of characters include letters, numerical digits, common punctuation marks (such as "." or "-"), and whitespace. The concept also includes control characters, which do not correspond to visible symbols but rather to instructions to format or process the text. Examples of control characters include carriage return and tab as well as other instructions to printers or other devices that display or otherwise process text. Characters are typically combined into strings. Historically, the term ''character'' was used to denote a specific number of contiguous bits. While a character is most commonly assumed to refer to 8 bits (one byte) today, other options like the 6-bit character code were once popular, and the 5-bit Baudot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Memory
In computing, memory is a device or system that is used to store information for immediate use in a computer or related computer hardware and digital electronic devices. The term ''memory'' is often synonymous with the term ''primary storage'' or '' main memory''. An archaic synonym for memory is store. Computer memory operates at a high speed compared to storage that is slower but less expensive and higher in capacity. Besides storing opened programs, computer memory serves as disk cache and write buffer to improve both reading and writing performance. Operating systems borrow RAM capacity for caching so long as not needed by running software. If needed, contents of the computer memory can be transferred to storage; a common way of doing this is through a memory management technique called ''virtual memory''. Modern memory is implemented as semiconductor memory, where data is stored within memory cells built from MOS transistors and other components on an integrated c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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