IBM 604

From: John Allain <allain_at_panix.com>
Date: Mon Jul 2 23:25:33 2001

You suggest a lot of responses here, so I'm a little shy
to respond with only this. BTW nice history lesson.

> - could a Frieden do a division?

Yes, on order of seconds. 2 secs for an extremely simple problem
and 10 secs for a very complex one. Required use of a special third
register. The algorithm was a simple one. More to the largest digit
and subtract down the number until zero was reached. Every time
zero is crossed, one time the divisor was added back and the next
lower position of digit was then used. This process was painfully
obvious just from the noise it made.

P.S. Was this one of the nonbinary "biquinary" machines?
   I guess one of the determining factors between computer
   and calculator.

John A.
Received on Mon Jul 02 2001 - 23:25:33 BST