Who will get the collectible IBM 7090 mainframe?
IBM 7090 – a symbol of technological progress in the 50s and 60s – will be sold today at Christie's auction. The auction organizers valued the server, which was released almost 65 years ago, at 40-60 thousand dollars. The day before the end of the auction, the maximum bid reached 11 thousand dollars. In this article, we analyze the value of the mainframe, which today any smartphone can surpass in terms of performance.
A 10-ton computer and a cart with instructions
The example up for auction is part of the collection of Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft. He purchased the mainframe from the Armament Research Establishment in South Australia in 2017.
The lot includes not only the IBM 7090 itself, but also a lot of components and documentation:
IBM 7151 Console Control Unit with IBM 7155 Switch Control Console Attached to the Side
IBM 711 Card Reader
Two IBM 7617 Data Link Consoles
IBM 7608 Power Converter
13 IBM 729 magnetic tape units
IBM 1401 Mainframe
IBM 7302 Memory Core
IBM 7606 Multiplexer
IBM 7108 Instruction Processing Unit
IBM 7109 Arithmetic Unit
IBM 7607 I Data Channel
IBM 7607 II Data Channel
IBM 7618 Power Management Unit
IBM 1403 Printer
IBM 1402 Punch Card Reader
IBM 716 Printer
Trolley with operating instructions
Archive boxes with punch cards
Three boxes of archive folders with user manuals
12 archive boxes with printouts
The winner of the auction will receive a system weighing almost 10.5 tons. What the lucky owner of a rare mainframe will do with such a colossus, and most importantly, where to put it, remains to be seen. Perhaps collectors, exhibition centers or film companies will be interested in the historical artifact. In any case, bids are already being received by the auction organizers.
Dinosaur of the digital age: the first transistorized mainframe
IBM released the historic 7090 mainframe in 1959, marking the beginning of a revolution in computing.
Its main difference from the IBM 709, which worked on bulky vacuum tubes, was the use of transistors. This is what allowed its creators to achieve a leap in the efficiency and productivity of the server. And to reduce the floor area used to install the system by 50%.
The mainframe used 36-bit words and had an address space of 32 kilobytes. It was six times faster than its predecessor, the IBM 709. In one second, the IBM 7090 could perform 39.5 thousand multiplications, 32.7 thousand divisions, or 229 thousand additions or subtractions.
The IBM 7090 was a pioneer of its era, setting a new standard for computing speed. Its ability to quickly solve floating-point problems made it an invaluable tool for scientists and engineers, including those in the aerospace and nuclear industries. In 1960, for example, four 7090 mainframes were part of the U.S. Air Force’s ballistic missile warning system, according to IBM.
In 1961, programmers Carol Lockbaum and John Kelly made the IBM 7090 play a song Daisy Bell — the first song in history to be sung by a computer.
The success of the 7090 demonstrated the potential of transistorized computing systems and cemented IBM's leadership in the mainframe market. Its influence was felt in many areas throughout the 1960s, spurring innovation and shaping the future of computing. In fact, it was the 7090 that began storing industrial computers in secure, restricted-access rooms.
The architectural principles of the IBM 7090 influenced the IBM System/360 series, which was introduced in the mid-1960s. It emphasized compatibility and scalability, which were central concepts in the 7090 design philosophy.
Despite its historical significance, the once revolutionary IBM 7090 mainframe today is inferior in performance even to a smartphone. The processors of modern gadgets exceed the computing power of the IBM 7090 by thousands or even millions of times. What can we say about modern mainframes.
If the IBM 7090 had 50,000 transistors, then the IBM z16 has 22,000,000,000, and, unlike its ancestor, it is capable of processing 300 billion logical operations per day with a latency of 1 ms.
The Historical Role of the IBM 7090: The Mainframe in Film and in Life
The IBM 7090 was announced on December 30, 1958, and withdrawn on July 14, 1969. It remains a symbol of the rapid technological progress of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Have you seen the movie Hidden Figures? It does a great job of showing how the era of computing began, and the role that the IBM 7090, which appears on screen several times, played in it. The story centers on three brilliant female scientists who perform a series of mathematical calculations for NASA. But techies of all levels can see in the film the signs of the times, when the world was just beginning to transition from manual to electronic calculations.
NASA was indeed one of the first U.S. government agencies to adopt IBM's new technology. Until then, the agency relied on people armed with calculators to do the math. They manually did complex calculations to determine, for example, where a space capsule would land so the Navy could be close enough to pick it up before it sank.
As early as 1960, two mainframes were in use at their Space Flight Center. A year later, mathematician Michael Minovich used an IBM 7090 to solve the three-body problem. His calculations were used to create a program for launching NASA's automatic stations.
In 1961, when the events of the film take place, there were only a few thousand electronic computers on the planet: few people knew how to make the hardware work, and even dragging it into a room was a problem, since the computer did not fit through the doorway. All these difficulties of the time of transition from manual to electronic calculations are perfectly shown in the film.
According to IBM archive data, in those years a server could be purchased for $2.9 million or rented for $63,500 per month. Today, its cost is estimated at $40,000–60,000.
Write in the comments what IT relic would you buy for that kind of money?
