Forefather Machines of Computing Term Paper

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stands on its own as being one of the most dominant and important computers constructed and manufactured throughout the history of computing. This says a lot considering the modern age of the Internet and computing did not really start until the 1990's and the IBM 360 was brought about roughly thirty years before that. This report shall offer a brief summary and review of the IBM 360, what is meant to the business and wider world at the time and what it still means to this very day.

One that fact clearly stands out when it comes to IBM and the 360 is that they literally bet the future of their company when they developed and created the computer. This was despite the fact that IBM dominated the computing world at the time. Indeed, of all of the computers out there at the time, IBM was the manufacturer of about two thirds of them…two out of three. This was the scope and feel of the computing market as of 1961. As of 1962, the revenue of IBM was about $2.5 billion. It literally cost double that to develop and create the IBM 360 for the marketplace. Then-Company President Tom Watson Jr. unveiled the 360 for the marketplace in 1964 with a total of six different computer models that had a performance range of 50 to 1. There were also nearly fifty peripherals that could be paired with the IBM 360. The corporate market was very receptive as the orders for the new machine flooded in quite quickly (Computer History, 2015).

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The announcement of the new computer had the attention of many people around the world. Indeed, the April 7th, 1964 announcement regarding the IBM 360 was made to more than one hundred thousand people in 165 different cities. IBM even went to the trouble of arranging transportation from Grand Central Station to its Poughkeepsie, New York location for the aforementioned announcement. One major trait of the IBM 360 that greatly worked in its favor was that it was compatible with a lot of different systems and equipment and this held true for both IBM and non-IBM machines. Indeed, while IBM had a lot of its own peripherals that could be added, there were plenty of third-party peripherals that could also "play well" with the IBM 360. Just one function that the IBM 360 could be used for was data plotting. A peripheral device that could be used for precisely that was known as the CalComp Plotter. There was also the Telex Tape Drive system, which was a technology that was huge with computers at the time (Computer….....

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