IBM®
Skip to main content
    Country/region [change]    Terms of use
 
 
 
    Home    Products    Services & solutions    Support & downloads    My account    

IBM Technical Journals
Special report: Celebrating 50 years of the IBM Journals
All topics > Computing System Architectures >

The architecture of IBM's early computers

 Award plaque by C. J. Bashe,
W. Buchholz,
G. V. Hawkins,
J. J. Ingram,
and N. Rochester

Most of the early computers made by IBM for commercial production are briefly described with an emphasis on architecture and performance. The description covers a period of fifteen years, starting with the design of an experimental machine in 1949 and extending to, but not including, the announcement in 1964 of System/360.

Originally published:

IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 25, Issue 5, pp. 363-376 (1981).

Significance:

IBM's early computers represented critical milestones in the theory and practice of computer science in the twentieth century. This paper describes most of the computers made by IBM from 1949 to 1964, emphasizing their architecture and performance at the level of machine language. The computers described here, all of them electronic stored-program computers, are those which had the most significant technical impact at their time and subsequently. The paper begins with a section on machines that were precursors of the modern computer.

Comments:


    About IBM    Privacy    Contact