Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Many hundred billion years ago, there existed a bizzare world that most
> of us have only read about in books. Plastics did not yet exist, so
> small children's toys were made of wood or metal, because there was
> literally nothing cheaper. Wires were insulated with fabic. If you
> wanted to make a telephone call, you did not *dial* the telephone
> number; you told the human being at the other end of the line which
> number you wanted to be connected to, and they would physically plug in
> the right cable.
>
> Somewhere in this primordial soup, the first computers somehow came into
> being. According to the dusty history books, the very first computers
> used technologies such as electro-mechanical relays, vacuum tubes, drum
> memory, punch cards and so forth. And, in the beginning, all of the
> components were wired together by hand. This resulted in huge pieces of
> engineering which filled entire buildings, consumed insane quantities of
> electricity, requires specialist cooling systems, and had _vastly_ less
> computing power than the microcontroller in your washing machine.
>
> Was anybody actually there? Did any of you guys see this happen? What
> was it like? And did mainframes really come in bright orange cases with
> inch-square glowy buttons on the front that randomly twinkle?
>
> --
> http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
> http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

This is an image of the first mainframe I worked with in 1969.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/images/2423PH2050.jpg

It was an IBM 360 model 50. The tape drives in the background are IBM 2400
models.  The machine was controlled from the IBM 1052 console, a modified IBM
typewriter.  The IBM 2501 just in front and to the left of the operator could
read about 1000 cards per minute.  The IBM 2311 disk drives in the foreground
had removable disk packs which held a little more than 7 MB IIRC. As you can see
there were quite a few flashing lights on the front panel. Besides showing the
status info, you could use them to read/alter the contents of memory.
Sometime I think they were a lot more fun then.

Isaac.

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