IBM 608

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The IBM 608 was the first IBM product to use transistor circuits without any vacuum tubes and is believed to be the world's first all-transistorized calculator to be manufactured for the commercial market.[1][2] The 608 contained more than 3,000 germanium transistors.[3] Announced in April 1955,[4] it was released in December 1957. It was similar in nature of operation to the vacuum tube IBM 604, which had been introduced a decade earlier.[5] Although the 608 outpaced its immediate predecessor, the IBM 607 by a factor of 2.5,[4] it was soon rendered obsolete by newer IBM products and only a few dozen were ever delivered.[6][7] The 608 was withdrawn from marketing in April 1959.[4]

The use of transistors was a significant departure from the previous IBM calculators of this line. The 608 also used magnetic core memory, but was still programmed using a control panel.[8] The main memory of the 608 could store 40 nine-digit numbers, and it had an 18-digit accumulator.[8] In raw speed terms, it could perform 4,500 additions per second, it could multiply two nine-digit numbers, yielding an 18-digit result in 11 milliseconds, and it could divide an 18-digit number by a nine-digit number to produce the nine-digit quotient in 13 milliseconds.[4] The 608 could handle 80 program steps.[8]

To spur the adoption of transistor technology, shortly before the first IBM 608 shipped, Tom Watson directed that a date be set after which no new vacuum-tube-based products would be released.[9] This decision constrained IBM product managers, who otherwise had the latitude to select components for their products, to make the move to transistors. As a result, the successor to the IBM 650 used transistors, and it became the IBM 7070—the company's first transistorized stored-program computer.[3]

The chief designer of the circuits used in the IBM 608 was Robert A. Henle, who later oversaw the development of emitter-coupled logic (ECL) class of circuits.[10] The development of the 608 was preceded by the prototyping of an experimental all-transistor version of the 604. Although this was built and demonstrated in October 1954, it was not commercialized.[3]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bashe, Charles J.; et al. (1986). IBM's Early Computers. MIT. p. 386. 
  2. ↑ Pugh, Emerson W.; Johnson, Lyle R.; Palmer, John H. (1991). IBM's 360 and early 370 systems. MIT Press. p. 34. ISBN 0-262-16123-0. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Pugh, Johnson & Palmer 1991, p. 50
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 IBM Archives: IBM 608 calculator
  5. ↑ Pugh, Johnson & Palmer 1991, p. 34
  6. ↑ Pugh, Johnson & Palmer 1991, p. 48
  7. ↑ Bashe 1986, p. 464
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Frank da Cruz, The IBM 608 Calculator, Columbia University Computing History
  9. ↑ Bashe 1986, p. 387
  10. ↑ Pugh, Johnson & Palmer 1991, p. 59


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