Part of the first IBM 650 computer in Norway (1959), known as "EMMA". 650 Console Unit (right, an exterior side panel is open), 533 Card Read Punch unit (middle, input-output). 655 Power Unit is missing. Punched card sorter (left, not part of the 650). Now at Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology in Oslo.
Type
Digital computer
Release date
1954; 70 years ago (1954)
Predecessor
IBM CPC (604, 605)
Successor
IBM 7070 (hi-end) IBM 1620 (low-end)
Related
IBM 701, IBM 702; IBM 608
IBM 650 at Texas A&M University. The IBM 533 Card Read Punch unit is on the right.IBM 650 console panel, showing bi-quinary indicators.[1]: p. 47ff Note wear marks around frequently used switches, lower right. Collection of the Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología. A Coruña (Galicia, Spain).Close-up of bi-quinary indicatorsMemory drum from an IBM 650Side view of an IBM 650 Console Unit. First computer in Spain (1959) now at National Museum of Science and Technology in A Coruña
The IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data-Processing Machine is an early digital computer produced by IBM in the mid-1950s.[2][3] It was the first mass-produced computer in the world.[4][5] Almost 2,000 systems were produced, the last in 1962,[6][7] and it was the first computer to make a meaningful profit.[7] The first one was installed in late 1954 and it was the most popular computer of the 1950s.[8]
The 650 was offered to business, scientific and engineering users as a slower and less expensive alternative to the IBM 701 and IBM 702 computers, which were for scientific and business purposes respectively.[7] It was also marketed to users of punched card machines who were upgrading from calculating punches, such as the IBM 604, to computers.[1]: 5 [9]
Because of its relatively low cost and ease of programming, the 650 was used to pioneer a wide variety of applications, from modeling submarine crew performance[10] to teaching high school and college students computer programming. The IBM 650 became highly popular in universities, where a generation of students first learned programming.[11]
It was announced in 1953 and in 1956 enhanced as the IBM 650 RAMAC with the addition of up to four disk storage units.[12] The purchase price for the bare IBM 650 console, without the reader punch unit, was $150,000 in 1959,[13] or roughly $1,500,000 as of 2023. Support for the 650 and its component units was withdrawn in 1969.
The 650 was a two-address, bi-quinary coded decimal computer (both data and addresses were decimal), with memory on a rotating magnetic drum. Character support was provided by the input/output units converting punched card alphabetical and special character encodings to/from a two-digit decimal code.
The 650 was clocked at a frequency of 125 kHz.[14] It could add or subtract in 1.63 milliseconds, multiply in 12.96 ms, and divide in 16.90 ms. The average speed of the 650 was estimated to be around 27.6 ms per instruction, or roughly 40 instructions per second.[15]
Donald Knuth's series of books The Art of Computer Programming is famously dedicated to a 650.[15]
^ abIBM 650 Magnetic Drum Data-Processing Machine: Manual of Operation(PDF). IBM. 1955. 22-6060-1.
^"IBM Archives: IBM 650 installation with IBM 727 Magnetic Tape Unit and IBM 355 Disk Storage". IBM. US. Archived from the original on 2023-04-09. Retrieved September 5, 2019.
^"IBM Archives: IBM 650 Assembly at Endicott plant". IBM. US. Archived from the original on 2023-10-23. Retrieved September 5, 2019.
^"History Of Computers 1937-2011". Old Dominion University. Retrieved June 22, 2021.
^"IBM in the Computer Era". The Minnesota Computing History Project. 28 June 2018. Retrieved June 21, 2021.
^Pugh, Emerson W. (1995). Building IBM: Shaping an Industry and Its Technology. MIT Press. p. 182. ISBN 978-0-262-16147-3.
^ abc"The IBM 650 Magnetic Drum Calculator". Columbia.edu.
^Davis, Gordon B. (1971). Introduction to Electronic Computers (Second ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-070-15821-4.
^"IBM Archives: 650 Customers". IBM. Archived from the original on 2023-07-25.
^Gray, Wayne D. (2007). Integrated Models of Cognition Systems. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-19-518919-3.
^"IBM 650 magnetic drum calculator introduced". Computerhistory.
^"IBM Archives: 650 RAMAC announcement press release". IBM. Archived from the original on 2023-06-09.
^"IBM Archives: IBM 650 Model 4 announcement press release". IBM. 2003-01-23. Archived from the original on 2023-10-23. Retrieved 2023-07-25.
^Royse, David (1957). "The IBM 650 RAMAC system disk storage operation". Papers presented at the February 26-28, 1957, western joint computer conference: Techniques for reliability on - IRE-AIEE-ACM '57 (Western). ACM Press. pp. 43–49. doi:10.1145/1455567.1455576.
The IBM650 Magnetic Drum Data-Processing Machine is an early digital computer produced by IBM in the mid-1950s. It was the first mass-produced computer...
701 was the IBM 702 and a lower-cost general-purpose sibling was the IBM650, which gained fame as the first mass-produced computer. IBM 701 competed...
September 14, 1956. Simultaneously a very similar product, the IBM 355, was announced for the IBM650 RAMAC computer system. RAMAC stood for "Random Access Method...
input/output unit on the IBM650. Later, the 407 print mechanism was used in the IBM 1132 line printer, part of the low cost IBM 1130 computer system, introduced...
modern standards. These included: IBM650 (vacuum tube logic, decimal architecture, drum memory, business and scientific) IBM 305 RAMAC (vacuum tube logic...
products, including the IBM 700 series of computer systems, IBM650, IBM 305 RAMAC with disk drive memory, and IBM 1401, positioned IBM as the world's leading...
of IBM products IBM System/360 IBM System/370 Karlsruhe Accurate Arithmetic (KAA) for the IBM 4361 Molly-guard 1955, IBM650, 1960s, UNIVAC 1100, IBM 7094...
time. Compared to the UNIVAC, IBM introduced a smaller, more affordable computer in 1954 that proved very popular. The IBM650 weighed over 900 kg, the attached...
electrical engineering. By 1960, versions of FORTRAN were available for the IBM 709, 650, 1620, and 7090 computers. Significantly, the increasing popularity of...
by IBM, e.g., IBM 305, IBM650, IBM offered drum devices as secondary storage for the 700/7000 series and System/360 series of computers. The IBM 731...
computers that were exclusively decimal include the ENIAC, IBM NORC, IBM650, IBM 1620, IBM 7070, UNIVAC Solid State 80. In these machines, the basic unit...
UNIVAC 1, IBM 702, IBM 705, IBM650, IBM 1400 series, and IBM 1620. Early binary addressed computers included Zuse Z3, Colossus, Whirlwind, AN/FSQ-7, IBM 701...
language on the IBM 1410, as a graduate student at North Carolina State University from 1962 to 1963. Dr. A. Grandage, author of IBM650 analysis-of-variance...
first IBM Fellow, appointed in 1963 for amongst other things his work on the development of the IBM650. In 1989, Fran Allen became the first female IBM Fellow...
IBM 7070 is a decimal-architecture intermediate data-processing system that was introduced by IBM in 1958. It was part of the IBM 700/7000 series, and...
SOAP (Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program) was an assembly language for the IBM650 computer written by Stan Poley in 1955. Assembly languages eliminate much...
Test Assembly, a precursor to IBM's early computers. The circuit module design and packaging was also used for the IBM650, the world's first mass-produced...
its stored-program configurations, the Gamma 3 mostly competed with the IBM650. Over the course of its ten-year availability, this machine facilitated...
6-bit characters (135 kilobytes). The first mass-produced computer, the IBM650 (1954), initially had up to 2,000 10-digit words, about 17.5 kilobytes...
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