Begin forwarded message:
From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com>
Date: September 3, 2008 10:17:59 AM EDT
To: <dave@farber.net>, "'ip'" <ip@v2.listbox.com>
Subject: RE: [IP] Re: One of your readers...
In the mid 80’s I happened to notice a book on the shelves at local bookstore titled “Electronic Computers” by Henry Jacobowitz. Turns out it was a 1963 book with transistors being a new technology. About halfway through it says “Transistors have largely replaced tubes in computers because they need only a few volts for operation and do not require any heater power at all”.
$7 (1960) may seem like a lot but according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7094 an IBM 7090 cost $2,900,000 in 1960 prices.
Considering that prodigious power consumption, reliability issues (which could be improved by keeping the tubes always powered up) and the ability to cover the high costs the decision to move to transistors would seem to have been a conservative decision with the risks being those associated with any developing technology.
Would a machine like the IBM 1620 even have been feasible with tubes? Of course the first model of the 1620 couldn’t afford to waste transistors on luxuries like an adder so it relied on memory lookup instead.
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 06:40
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Re: One of your readers...
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 06:40
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Re: One of your readers...
Begin forwarded message:
Date: September 2, 2008 3:18:21 PM EDT
Subject: Re: [IP] One of your readers...
Gene,
my business partner, Dick Deininger, worked at IBM from 1955-1984.
He sat in the circa Q3 1959 meeting where Vin Learson (then President of IBM) announced that "all future IBM computing products would be made using transistor logic".
Vin made it clear that anyone who did not want to participate in this major transition was free to leave the company.
The meeting lasted all of five minutes, after which the attendees were told to "get back to work".
He believes your figures are accurate, likely within a few pennies.
Dick is a treasure trove of information like this, feel free to call us if you like.
Kind regards,
my business partner, Dick Deininger, worked at IBM from 1955-1984.
He sat in the circa Q3 1959 meeting where Vin Learson (then President of IBM) announced that "all future IBM computing products would be made using transistor logic".
Vin made it clear that anyone who did not want to participate in this major transition was free to leave the company.
The meeting lasted all of five minutes, after which the attendees were told to "get back to work".
He believes your figures are accurate, likely within a few pennies.
Dick is a treasure trove of information like this, feel free to call us if you like.
Kind regards,
Rebecca S. Taylor
General Partner
Taylor-Deininger Partners
Austin, Texas
www.td-partners.com
(512) 288-7352 (o)
(512) 657-1066 (m)
-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Tuesday, September 2, 2008 03:11 PM
To: 'ip'
Subject: [IP] One of your readers...
Begin forwarded message: From: Gene Spafford Date: September 2, 2008 1:39:07 PM EDT To: David Farber Subject: One of your readers... Dave, Perhaps one of your readers would know the answer to this. I've tried various online and book searches and cannot find the answer. Some time back, I read (somewhere) that Thomas Watson, Jr. took a big gamble in going from the IBM 700 series to the 7000 series by using all transistor logic. This was circa 1959. The figure I recall is that transistors were about $7 each (in 1959 dollars; about $60 each in today's dollars). I'm looking for confirmation and/or a source citation for this. Thanks in advance. --spaf ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com
