The IBM 604 was a control panel programmable Electronic Calculating Punch introduced in 1948[1], and was a machine on which considerable expectations for the future of IBM were pinned and in which a corresponding amount of planning talent was invested. A plugboard, or control panel, was a device used to direct the operation of Unit record equipment, some cypher machines and some early computers Year 1948 ( MCMXLVIII) was a Leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the 1948 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. International Business Machines Corporation abbreviated IBM and nicknamed "Big Blue", is a multinational Computer Technology
Most of the circuitry was based on modifications of circuit designs used in the earlier 603 Electronic Multiplier and was packaged in small one-tube-replaceable pluggable units. The IBM 603 was the first mass-produced commercial electronic calculating device it used Vacuum tubes to perform multiplication and addition This article is about the electronic device not an evacuated pipe used for experiments in Free-fall. A Field Replaceable Unit or FRU is a Circuit board, part or assembly that can be quickly and easily removed from a Personal computer or other piece of The calculation unit contained 1,400 tubes. Clock speed was increased from the 603's rate of 35kHz to 50kHz. The clock rate is the fundamental rate in cycles per second (measured in Hertz) at which a Computer performs its most basic operations such as adding two The hertz (symbol Hz) is a measure of Frequency, informally defined as the number of events occurring per Second. The 604 performed fixed point addition, subtraction, multiplication and division using BCD arithmetic. In Computing and electronic systems binary-coded decimal ( BCD) is an encoding for decimal numbers in which each digit is represented by its own binary
Initial versions supported 40 program steps, but this was soon expanded to 60. Processing was still locked to the reader/punch cycle time, thus program execution had to complete within the time between a punched card leaving the read station and entering the punch station.
The 604 and a modified version, the 605, were used as components of the Card Programmed Electronic Calculators (CPC and CPC II). The IBM Card-Programmed Electronic Calculator or CPC was announced by IBM in May 1949. The 604 was also a component of the Test Assembly, a precursor to IBM's early computers[2].
See also: List of IBM products. The following is a list of notable products from the International Business Machines (IBM Corporation and its predecessor corporations beginning in the 1890s and spanning Punched
References
- IBM 604 Electronic Calculating Punch -- notes, manuals
- IBM (1954). IBM 604 Electronic Calculating Punch: Manual of Operation. 22-5279-10.
- IBM (1958). IBM Customer Engineering Manual of Instruction: 604 Electronic Calculating Punch. 227-7609-0.
External links
- Weik, Martin H. (March 1961). A Third Survey of Domestic Electronic Digital Computing Systems: IBM 604 Section. Ballistic Research Laboratories (BRL). Report No. 1115. Contains about 4 pages of IBM 604 survey detail: applications, customers, specifications, and costs.
- University of Amsterdam: Computer Museum, IBM 604
Notes
- ^ IBM Archive: 1948
- ^ Bashe, C. J. ; et al. (September, 1981). "The Architecture of IBM's Early Computers". IBM J. Res & Develop. 25 (5).
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