IBM 701

There are slides devoted to this topic: Lecture 0, p. 47, Lecture 9, pp. 33-37.

Websites

Read the IBM archive’s entry for the 701, which contains a concise introduction to IBM’s first commercially available computer.

For another overview of the computer, check out Columbia’s Computing History page on the 701.

To get a firsthand account of the work required to develop this computer – and other IBM models – read the University of Minnesota’s oral history interview with Gene M. Amdahl, who worked on the 700 series of computers for IBM.

Articles

IEEE: “Early Computers at IBM,” Cuthbert C. Hurd. This article begins with the 701 and continues through a number of other early computers, including RAMAC, STRETCH, SAGE the 650, the Defense Calculator, and other contemporaneous computers from IBM. Consisting of trial testimony, the author acknowledges that it specifically fails to acknowledge others’ work in the field at the same time, the contributions of many to the work done on these computers, and other ‘ancillary’ products made by IBM in the same era.

Books

Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, 109-113 (700 series, competition with Remington-Rand’s UNIVAC)