IBM, IBM System / 360 Installation Manual - Physical Planning. E. W. Pugh, L. R. Johnson and J. H. Palmer, IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. Location Currently not on view ...

IBM made a big bet in when it released the System/360 family of mainframes in 1964. They're not exactly IBM's biggest hit today, but they did help computing move forward, toward interoperability.

In the book of corporate folklore, former IBM CEO Thomas Watson Jr. deserves a special spot. Specifically, the massive gamble he took in 1964 to introduce the System/360, which had the potential ...

50 years ago today, IBM unveiled the System/360 mainframe, a groundbreaking computer that allowed new levels of compatibility between systems and helped NASA send astronauts to the Moon.

The IBM System/360 mainframe was the darling and the workhorse of its day. McKnight/AP 1964: IBM unveils the System/360 line of mainframe computers. It was a daring innovation that transformed ...

With the 360, that changed. A small company could buy a basic model for as little as $133,000. Conglomerates who could splurge could invest in systems that cost upwards of $5 million.

But a very large System/360 Model 195 was quite fast, could multiprocess, and had a whopping 4 MB of memory. The cost? Somewhere between $7 and $25 million in 1971 dollars!

Before the advent of the mainframe, IBM developed the 350 RAMAC. Built in 1956, it used a stack of fifty 24-inch disks as memory, which held about 4.4MB of data—just enough to store two pictures.

IBM’s president at the time, Tom Watson, Jr., killed off other IBM computer lines and put the company’s full force behind the System/360. IBM’s revenue swelled to $8.3 billion by 1971, up ...

IBM’s president at the time, Tom Watson, Jr., killed off other IBM computer lines and put the company’s full force behind the System/360. IBM’s revenue swelled to $8.3 billion by 1971, up ...