The Machine from Way Back

Dan Cameron

Although the first commercial American computer, the UNIVAC 1, was sold to the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951, according to the Hawaiian Historical society it wasn't until 1956 that Hawaii businesses entered the computing age when Libby, McNeil and Libby installed an IBM 650 mainframe.

The IBM 650 was considered an affordable mainframe and was initially leased for $3,200 a month. Considering inflation, that works out to about $22,000 in 2005 dollars. And that price just got you the main CPU (central processing unit) while the card reader/puncher was extra.

At the time, the IBM 650 was also notable for its small form factor. Compared to the massive UNIVAC 1, the 650 could actually fit in one room. The CPU was five feet tall, three feet wide and six feet long and required a power supply measuring the same dimensions. At a combined weight of almost 5,000 pounds, it was admittedly a bit heftier than a Mac Mini.

With no mouse, no keyboard, no monitor for display, how did you interact with this device? The IBM 650 was novel in that it featured a handy console of switches and blinking lights which could be accessed directly. More commonly, programs were entered into the computer via a stack of punch cards. Each of these cards could hold one single computer instruction, while modern computers process billions of instructions per second. The output from a program was punched onto another set of cards. In order to read the output, you needed to use a separate machine to translate the cards into a printout.

Fifty years later, we carry around mobile phones with many thousands of times the processing power of the IBM 650. Today, we use our computers to calculate, but also to communicate and create everything from this magazine you are reading to the parts in your car.

Here's hoping the next 50 years prove just as innovative.