IBM 360 turns 40 today

From: Andy Holt <andyh_at_andyh-rayleigh.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Thu Apr 8 01:00:30 2004

> That reminds me of a interesting quote from Thomas Watson:
>
> Last week Control Data ... announced the 6600 system. I understand
> that in the laboratory developing the system there are only 34
> people including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are
> programmers ... Contrasting this modest effort with our vast
> development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our
> industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the
> world's most powerful computer.
>

Russets and Citrus fruits

The 6600 was a single design intended to do one thing excellently (run
Fortran programs)
One model, one assembler, one Fortran compiler, and a minimal operating
system.
(OK, later came the variants. The other operating systems and compilers came
from the customers)

The S/360 ... well you can fill the rest in yourself (but I'll mention that
there were at least two compilers each for at least 4 programming languages)

Andy
Received on Thu Apr 08 2004 - 01:00:30 BST