> There was a piece of EAM equipment called a “multiplier” that used valves (predecessor to transistors, designed for use in radios and TVs). This machine could read two numbers out of a punched card, and multiply (or divide) them and punch the result back into different columns in the same card. The problem was that it was not very reliable (valves kept burning out – when you have some hundreds of valves, the chance…
That was probably an IBM 604.[1] The 604 was the first piece of electronic computing equipment manufactured and sold in quantity. It's an illustration of the big problem of the era - no good memory devices. The 604 had electronic add, subtract, multiply, divide, and control flow, but was programmed with a plugboard and had punched-card I/O. No place to store data other than a few registers. Tube failure was more or l…
Re: The First Computers in East Africa and what became of them (2015)
#11IBM made a killing in ww2