IEEE Annals of the History of Computing

Dreams of using digital computers in industrial control systems surfaced almost as soon as such a computer was invented in the mid to late 1940s. By the early fifties, the concepts of such use were fairly well established. However, actual applications had to wait until relatively small, reliable, and also relatively inexpensive machines were available, along with vendor companies with the will and... View full abstract»

The IBM 1500 Instructional System was the only commercial system produced by a single manufacturer that had an integrated student terminal configuration providing a keyboard and light pen response mode, CRT-based graphics, audio, and static film projection. Experimental instructional systems had been developed by IBM prior to a prototype version of the 1500 Instructional System, which was tested a... View full abstract»

The report presented was written by John McPherson in late 1935 and submitted to IBM Think magazine for publication. However, it was never published and recently resurfaced on John's desk. The report outlines the development of methods for doing mass multiplication using a tabulating machine that was routinely used for simpler calculations in many companies. The tabulator was the mainstay of the I... View full abstract»

From a modest start in 1957, Control Data Corporation under the leadership of its founder, William C. Norris, grew rapidly to become a worldwide, multibillion dollar enterprise, the major producer of the world's most powerful computers and peripheral products and provider of a wide range of vital computer services. Along the way the company explored means for applying digital technologies to aid i... View full abstract»