

Information Technology, 50 Years Ago - transburgh
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/01/information-technology-50-years-ago/

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russell
What I find interesting was that ERMA was totally obsolete when delivered. By
the end of 1959 IBM had delivered the 1401 and the 7090 both transistorized.
The 1401 was the mainstay of the business world until the advent of the 360 in
1965. The 1401 and 7090 were q dynamite combination where the 1401 served as
an offline peripheral controller for the 7090. The 7094 was my first computer.
Baseball was my first computer game, played on the console switches and
displayed on the accumulator and index register displays. (My first video game
was Space Wars on a PDP 1.)

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blogimus
The hardware that went into ERMA may have been obsolete, but that is only the
foundation of the technology. The project was years in the making. I can
imagine that trying to sell adoption of emerging transitory technology into a
massive financial system would have seemed an unwarranted risk.

Magnetic ink doesn't care who reads it and magnetic ink readers don't care if
they're driven by vacuum tubes, transistors, microprocessors, or (we hope)
photonic integrated circuits. The vision that went into this project was
phenomenal. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the foundation of our
modern electronic banking?

Another point on obsolescence: consider microprocessors in satellites and
probes. I understand that well proven circuitry is required, which by nature
is obsolete because it trails newer system in features and performance.

"Traditionally, space-qualified single board computers (SBCs) have trailed the
cutting-edge commercial and military products by factors of performance often
times in excess of 10-100x."

See: <http://www.cotsjournalonline.com/home/article.php?id=100088>

So the technology was obsolete for "new technology" but it still was suitable
for the purpose it was intended, whether finance or space exploration, both
areas we don't want to make mistakes.

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russell
In 1959 the whole computer industry was on the cusp of the conversion from
vacuum tubes to transistors, but it was not like jumping off the cliff. The
vacuum tube predecessor to the 7090 was the 709. Vacuum tubes were unreliable
because they burned out frequently. The transistor machines were a huge step
forward in reliability and the 7090 was at least 20 times faster. Once the
transistor machines came out the vacuum tube ones were dead. I imagine BofA
was faced with the decision of a year's delay to get the new systems and
rewrite the software or go ahead with what they had.

Those were the days where every new machine required a rewrite of all your
software. OTOH there wasn't very much of it. ERMA had only 4000 bytes of
memory and the 7090 had 32K 36 bit words.

Processors for satellites are entirely different animals. They have to be
radiation hardened. It's not a matter of waiting for generation x of the x86
to prove itself. Commercial processors flat out wont work in high radiation
environments.

