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IBM 610
Vacuum tube computer system From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The IBM 610 Auto-Point Computer is one of the first personal computers, in the sense of a computer to be used by one person whose previous experience with computing might only have been with desk calculators. It was controlled interactively by a keyboard. The principal designer of this machine was John Lentz, as part of his work for the Watson Lab at Columbia University.
 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (February 2010) |
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The IBM 610 was introduced in 1957.[1][2] It was small enough to easily fit in an office; it weighed about 800 pounds (360 kg).[3] It was designed to be used in a normal office, without any special electrical or air conditioning requirements. It used vacuum tubes, a magnetic drum, and punched paper tape readers and punchers. The input was from a keyboard and output was to an IBM electric typewriter, at eighteen characters per second. It was one of the first computers to be controlled from a keyboard. The term "auto-point" referred to the ability to automatically adjust the decimal point in floating-point arithmetic.
Its price was $55,000, or it could be rented for $1150 per month ($460 academic). IBM made 180 units. It was a slow and limited computer, and was generally replaced by the IBM 1620.
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