[SIGCIS-Members] IBM 610

[Dag Spicer]

The Computer History Museum restored an IBM 1620 to working order back in 2004.  It was exhibited frequently in a specially-designed ‘computer lab’ as one might have looked in 1965.  Visitors could enter programs directly at the IBM Model B typewriter used as in the input device, print out their results, then take them home as a souvenir.

You can read a full project description here:

Dag Spicer, "The IBM 1620 Restoration Project", IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol.27, no. 3, pp. 33-43, July-September 2005, doi:10.1109/MAHC.2005.46

Dag


On Mar 3, 2016, at 9:40 AM, Dave Walden <dave.walden.family at gmail.com<mailto:dave.walden.family at gmail.com>> wrote:

On 3/3/2016 12:21 PM, Ceruzzi, Paul wrote:
The 1620 had very few logic circuits; it looked up sums in a table instead. It’s nickname was “CADET”: “can’t add; doesn’t even try!” There is a 1620 preserved at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana. A few years ago, Ted Hoff was given an award by the museum. As he walked by the 1620, he remarked that had used one, and that the machine’s creative use of memory in place of logic convinced him that it would be possible to create a processor on a sliver of silicon—what became the Intel 4004.
Hoff and the 1620 influence on the 4004 is discussed at
   http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Intel_4004_2/102658187.05.01.acc.pdf
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