How It All Began…
Supercomputers can handle absolutely enormous processing tasks these days and some will be approaching 1 PFLOPS (1 Peta Floating Point Operations). It would be pretty sweet to play a game of Solitaire on that baby!
After a little research I found IBM’s Naval Ordnance Research Calculator (NORC) to be considered the first supercomputer. Of course, I am a little partial to considering the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) to be the first supercomputer because I am an Iowa State University student, which is where that was built. However, this article is taking a look at the IBM NORC…so let’s start with a quick video of it in action:
Here are some specs on the IBM NORC:
- Decimal integer and floating-point notation and operation.
- Word size: 16 decimal digits + check digit (64 + 2 bits).
- 64 three-address instructions.
- Clock: 1 µsec.
- 15,000 operations per second with automatic error checking.
- Two universal registers, one million digits per second.
- Three address/index registers.
- Add time: 15 µsec. Multiply: 31 µsec. Divide: 227 µsec.
- Random-access CRT memory: 3600 words, 8 sec access, provided by 264 Williams-type CRTs
- Magnetic tape: 8 units, 4-track, 510 char/inch, 71,500 char/sec.
- Printers: 2 units, 120 char/line, 150 lines/minute.
- Offline card/tape converter.
- Control console: Decimal display of register contents, manual controls, status lights.
- Swappable components.
- Cost: approximately $2.5 million (1950s dollars).
This bad boy could calculate PI in just 13 minutes to a precision of 3,089 digits! Wowsers! 
To assemble this supercomputer it took 60 people and more than 9800 vacuum tubes. I find it very interesting to see how far computers have come and how small they have gotten. It makes me wonder how long it will be before the PDA’s will be at the same speeds as our current computers run at. I’m sure it will be a lot quicker than we think.
News Source: Columbia.edu
It’s always interesting to look back – but the machines we use today have no recognisable similarity to the machines of old – both in construction and in use.
What do you mean there is no similarities? We still have computers that take up a whole room…they are just a little bit faster.
Well, they used CRTs, and while many are switching to LCDs (DLPs and soon OLED monitors/tvs), I’ll stick with CRTs for their reliability, scalability, economically priced value I find with them, that you simply can not find in the newer display technologies!
The CRT was not a display. The “RAM” in the compuer was a cathode ray tube. See this site:
[cedmagic.com]
The first random access storage device for digital computers was actually the cathode ray tube. This was invented by Fred Williams at England’s Manchester University in 1946 and was later used in the Manchester Mark I computer.
The device operated by writing a grid of dots and dashes (later dim and bright dots) to the CRT which were sensed by the collector plate that flips up directly over the CRT. Any binary word in the display could immediately be read, instead of having to be sequentially accessed.
During this same time frame in the U.S., RCA Laboratories inventor Jan Rajchman had another random access storage device under development called the Selectron Tube. This was a modified CRT where the electron beam struck a mica wafer into which a grid of nickel-plated steel eyelets was embedded. The eyelets were either charged or not charged by the electron beam to store binary data. The Selectron tube was a failure as manufacturing difficulties limited it to 256 bits of storage, compared to the 2048 bits for the Williams tube of that time. Rajchman went on to do research on core memory, which itself ultimately made the Williams tube obsolete.
wooo for iowa state!
You must live near me because our IP address is nearly identical.