[SIGCIS-Members] IBM 610
Allan Olley
allan.olley at utoronto.ca
Thu Mar 3 11:53:25 PST 2016
Hi,
This is a complete tangent you can find much the same information
with some elaboration at the IBM archives:
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_intro.html
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_room.html
Including a full score of Ever Onward (I was racking my brains
trying to remember where I saw this):
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_EO1.html
The IBM songbook is also there as a searchable pdf which someone
may find handy:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/pdf/SB1.pdf
And clips of four songs as sung by IBMers:
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/music_clips.html
--
Yours Truly,
Allan Olley, PhD
http://individual.utoronto.ca/fofound/
On Thu, 3 Mar 2016, James Cortada wrote:
> Here is the text http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/tripping-through-ibms-astonishi
> ngly-insane-1937-corporate-songbook/
> And if you just want to hear Ever Onward--THE IBM song have a listenhere http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/tripping-through-ibms-aston
> ishingly-insane-1937-corporate-songbook/
>
> Enjoy!
>
> On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 11:05 AM, Murray Turoff <murray.turoff at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> Ahhh! I worked on the IBM 1620 for IBM in san jose for a
> year 1960-1961.
> It was a "personal computer" about the size of a desk. It had a
> continuous memory
> and you could set up the word length you wanted. Memory was based
> upon our standard
> digital system to the base 10. At that point in time there was
> only three machines at
> the San Jose plant and a group of us were working on
> applications. I wrote a guide to
> machine level programming and debugging and worked with others on a
> Fortran System as well
> a numerical control application package. It was a fun machine to
> work with.
>
> At the San Jose plant a lot of sales people were brought in to be
> educated in new but not yet
> released products. They always sang IBM songs to start the
> meeting. I think somehwere i have
> burried an IBM song book. They were extremely loyal as some them
> were with IBM in 1929 and
> it was only IBM and ATT that did not fire any professional during
> that recession. Many had nothing much
> to do so they started a song writing contest which resulted in the
> song book. I have never checked
> if the song book is online anywhere.
>
> On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 4:52 AM, Mounier Kuhn <mounier at msh-paris.fr>
> wrote:
>
> Thanks for this discussion. Bashe et al., in their book
> IBM's Early Computers, explain that the IBM 610 was not
> developed to answer any market demand ; it reflected
> the internal needs of IBM’s growing staff of engineers
> and scientists who used desk calculators. Being not a
> priority, its development was delayed, but it inspired
> the successful IBM 1620… and perhaps many small
> computers marketed by competitors in the late 1950s. So
> we have a faily good idea of what use was envisioned :
> A scientist or engineer who needed to perform
> relatively simple calculations which did not justify
> the cost of waiting in line to use a mainframe.
>
> It would be interesting to know :
>
> - what competitive advantage the IBM 610 had over a
> good desk calculator ;
>
> - how the IBM 610 was renamed from Personal Automatic
> Calculator to Auto-Point Computer (the choice of
> Computer makes sense, but Auto-Point?)
>
> I have an alternative question (sorry if it is half
> off-topic !). In the early 1970s, the term
> micro-ordinateur [micro-computer] appeared in various
> development projects within the French Plan Calcul. It
> designated any « very small computer », whatever the
> technology – it was not necessarily related with
> microprocessors. Was the term micro-computer used in
> this broad sense in other locations, before 1975 when
> microprocessor-based micro-computers became the
> mainstream concept in this market segment ?
>
> Best,
>
> Pierre
>
> Pierre Mounier-Kuhn
> CNRS & Université Paris-Sorbonne
> L’Emergence d’une science: l’informatique
> http://koyre.ehess.fr/docannexe/file/1203/mounier_kuhn_cv_anglais.pdf
> https://cnrs.academia.edu/PierreMounierKuhn
>
>
> Le 3 mars 2016 à 01:38, Hansen Hsu <hansnhsu at gmail.com> a
> écrit :
>
> I’ve noticed this too. Gordon Bell, Wes Clark,
> and Alan Kay have all been on record saying that
> they considered the LINC the first personal
> computer, as it was also designed for use by an
> individual (a biomedical researcher).
> Joe November’s excellent book goes into some
> detail on this. LINC inspired some of the
> creators of the Alto, both in terms of the user’s
> experience of controlling the entire machine, but
> also in some aspects of its hardware
> architecture.
> I certainly think LINC belongs in the pre-history
> of the personal computer, as does Engelbart’s
> NLS, but I would hesitate to call it a “personal
> computer” for precisely the reasons you’ve
> outlined for the IBM 610, which is even earlier.
> If one took the criteria to be that an individual
> had complete control over the machine while in
> use, then TX-0 or even Whirlwind might count as
> personal computers. The term begins to lack
> meaning at that point.
>
> On Mar 2, 2016, at 4:11 PM, Allan
> Olley <allan.olley at utoronto.ca>
> wrote:
>
> Hello,
> http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/610.html
> The 610 was under development as the
> Personal Automatic Computer (acording
> to this website and according to
> Bashe et al. in the MIT book IBM's
> Early Computer, a prototype was
> operating by 1954 with commercial
> release by 1957) it was intended as a
> more real time less batch modey sort
> of machine unlike other machines of
> that time, but no one really
> seriously seems to claim it has any
> relation to any other "personal
> computer" either in terms of hardware
> details (it apparently had very
> ideosyncratic hardware) or even as
> vague inspiration.
> The key point I guess is that it
> pretty clearly has nothing to do with
> the microprocessor based computers of
> the 1970s and later that are usually
> called personal computers.
>
> I have noticed that the idea of a
> personal computer and personal
> computing gets used to describe
> machines before the microprocessor
> machines of the 1970s. The website
> mentions the Bendix G-15 as another
> example of this (some apparently
> claim it as the first personal
> computer and it was released
> commercially in 1956). The issue here
> is that any computer an individual
> has complete control of regardless of
> its characteristics (size, intended
> use etc.) can become a personal
> computer in terms of how that user
> feels about it and interacts with it.
> So any computer can be a personal
> computer in that ambigious sense it
> seems to me. It also gets complicated
> because people's interactions with
> earlier transistor and vacuum tube
> machines influenced them in designing
> and using the microprocessor machines
> that are unambigiously personal
> computers. So there are connections
> that should be made that make it
> complicated.
>
> --
> Yours Truly,
> Allan Olley, PhD
>
> http://individual.utoronto.ca/fofound/
>
> On Wed, 2 Mar 2016, John Impagliazzo
> wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> Allegedly, some consider
> the IBM 610 Auto-Point
> computer (1959) the
> ‘first personal
> computer’.
> http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/plugboard.html
> Is this true – even
> slightly true??
>
> John
>
> John Impagliazzo, Ph.D.
> Professor Emeritus,
> Hofstra University
> IEEE Life Fellow
> ACM Distinguished
> Educator
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at
> sigcis.org, the email discussion list
> of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed
> here are those of the member posting
> and are not reviewed, edited, or
> endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives
> are at
> http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/
> and you can change your subscription
> options at
> http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org,
> the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS.
> Opinions expressed here are those of the member
> posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed
> by SIGCIS. The list archives are at
> http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/
> and you can change your subscription options at
> http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email
> discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are
> those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or
> endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at
> http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you
> can change your subscription options at
> http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
>
>
>
>
> --
> please send messages to murray.turoff at gmail.com do not use
> @njit.edu address
>
> Distinguished Professor Emeritus
> Information Systems, NJIT
> homepage: http://is.njit.edu/turoff
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email
> discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those
> of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by
> SIGCIS. The list archives are at
> http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can
> change your subscription options at
> http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
>
>
>
>
> --
> James W. Cortada
> Senior Research Fellow
> Charles Babbage Institute
> University of Minnesota
> jcortada at umn.edu
> 608-274-6382
>
>
More information about the Members
mailing list