Publisher Summary This chapter presents the details of the history of computer development at IBM. IBM entered the computer field with the installation of a 701 in the IBM Technical Computing Bureau in New York City in December 1952, and the shipment of the first customer machine to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory early in 1953. It also describes certain characteristics and features of the 701 hardware and software, and the technology from which the 701 was developed. The 701 was of the von Neumann type, a binary, 36-bit word machine with parallel arithmetic, three arithmetic registers, and 32 single-address instructions. SHARE was a model for user groups both with respect to other products in IBM and in regard to many other manufacturers of computers. It has been a teaching device and a reaction device of great help to IBM in its product development. The increasing acceptance of the 701 in late 1952 led inexorably to the need for a medium-size and medium-price computer that, among other things, would succeed the card-programmed electronic calculator (CPC).
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