When the trees were big, the sky was blue and the computers were heavy.
Many good things now and you will not meet - children playing in the yard, fruits that are tastier than they look, comfortable air travel. But can anyone really be nostalgic for the old big iron computers that are lost to today's handhelds in everything?
“Nothing can repeat the first love,” says Ed Thelen, an engineer who has already retired, who, along with about 30 people, restored the old IBM 1401 computer for the museum of computer equipment in the Caliph. “This is a mechanical machine: the belt mechanism has an air sensor, a small rubber diaphragm that comes in contact with the tape and you can see how it works. For modern computers, this is fantastic, their elements are only a few nanometers long and you will never see them. ”
In the heyday of the 1401s, in the 1960s, about 9,300 of these computers worked. Together with about 6,000 predecessors, by the 1967th year the line of the 1400s occupied half of all computers in the world. They were used primarily for sorting, in particular for accounting, payroll, posting ananliz and internal accounting.
These computers had cultural resonance. In the movie Dr. Strangelove (1964), a black satire on nuclear war, has a scene from 1401. Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson wrote the orchestra piece IBM 1401: A User's Manual (2006), which is available on iTunes.
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The car has become popular because of its simplicity and cheapness. The 1401st worked with decimal data, not binary, and could accept numbers with different numbers of digits. Companies could rent it for $ 6,500 per month, which is equivalent to $ 45,000 today, quite an adequate price for a fully transistor machine with the ability to save programs. Such opportunities provided only large systems, costing more than this six times.
The museum made a better deal in 2003, when five enthusiasts bought the old 1401th in German eBay for $ 21,000.
However, such a low price was explained by the fact that the car was flooded with water during storage in Hamburg. It took about 10,000 man-hours to repair. Parts changed mainly to the original. Sometimes it was the fact that the “recreators” themselves were old: Bob Ericson served IBM machines in the fleet in 1943. The price also reflects the technical background of the seller, a German engineer who bought the car for his purposes in 1972, when IBM stopped supporting these models and he could not bear the possible destruction of the machine with which his whole life was connected. And of course, we can feel the effect of Moore's law: 1401, weighing 4 tons, has one millionth of the computing power of a modern computer for $ 600.
Photos of the restored 1401 under the cut:
spectrum.ieee.org/slideshow/computing/hardware/the-rebirth-of-the-ibm-1401-computer
“Nothing can repeat the first love,” says Ed Thelen, an engineer who has already retired, who, along with about 30 people, restored the old IBM 1401 computer for the museum of computer equipment in the Caliph. “This is a mechanical machine: the belt mechanism has an air sensor, a small rubber diaphragm that comes in contact with the tape and you can see how it works. For modern computers, this is fantastic, their elements are only a few nanometers long and you will never see them. ”
In the heyday of the 1401s, in the 1960s, about 9,300 of these computers worked. Together with about 6,000 predecessors, by the 1967th year the line of the 1400s occupied half of all computers in the world. They were used primarily for sorting, in particular for accounting, payroll, posting ananliz and internal accounting.
These computers had cultural resonance. In the movie Dr. Strangelove (1964), a black satire on nuclear war, has a scene from 1401. Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson wrote the orchestra piece IBM 1401: A User's Manual (2006), which is available on iTunes.
')
The car has become popular because of its simplicity and cheapness. The 1401st worked with decimal data, not binary, and could accept numbers with different numbers of digits. Companies could rent it for $ 6,500 per month, which is equivalent to $ 45,000 today, quite an adequate price for a fully transistor machine with the ability to save programs. Such opportunities provided only large systems, costing more than this six times.
The museum made a better deal in 2003, when five enthusiasts bought the old 1401th in German eBay for $ 21,000.
However, such a low price was explained by the fact that the car was flooded with water during storage in Hamburg. It took about 10,000 man-hours to repair. Parts changed mainly to the original. Sometimes it was the fact that the “recreators” themselves were old: Bob Ericson served IBM machines in the fleet in 1943. The price also reflects the technical background of the seller, a German engineer who bought the car for his purposes in 1972, when IBM stopped supporting these models and he could not bear the possible destruction of the machine with which his whole life was connected. And of course, we can feel the effect of Moore's law: 1401, weighing 4 tons, has one millionth of the computing power of a modern computer for $ 600.
Photos of the restored 1401 under the cut:
spectrum.ieee.org/slideshow/computing/hardware/the-rebirth-of-the-ibm-1401-computer
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/75072/
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