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IBM 704 Dead

IBM 704
KindMachine
Introduced1954
Discontinued1960
StatusDead
ManufacturerIBM
ClassMainframe
PlatformCore memory, hardware floating point
Sourcebitsavers.org ↗

The first mass-produced machine with floating-point hardware — and the delivery vehicle for FORTRAN, the first commercially successful high-level language.

Created by IBM

The 704 added hardware floating point and index registers to the 701's design — the architecture FORTRAN was designed for. Backus's team's 1957 FORTRAN compiler for it proved generated code could approach hand-coded performance, ending the assembly-era argument.

The Bell Labs installation produced the first computer music (Kelly and Lochbaum's 1962 'Daisy Bell,' the song HAL sings in 2001).

→ Read the full article on the ALB Wiki

Sources

  1. bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/704/
  2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_704