21 May 1952 - IBM announces its first electronic computer

Digital Innovation Days

With the introduction of IBM 701, the company’s first electronic computer, the tech giant entered the computer business. The development of this machine for commercial purposes was viewed as a radical move by many considering IBM was the largest supplier of punched card equipment and supplies worldwide at that time. However, 701 proved highly successful for the company with nineteen machines being built - a record volume for a computer of this type back then. This was the first production computer for IBM.

While scientific and research reasons were primarily quoted as the motivation for this computer, a major reason this machine was built was to assist the US in the Korean war. It was meant to contribute to the defence calculator which would help the UN in policing Korea. Of the 19 machines developed, most went to research facilities, government agencies, and aircraft companies. Besides this, IBM 701 came with many notable features for a computer at that time. It included electrostatic storage tube memory, had binary, fixed-point, single address hardware, worked with an electronic analytical and control unit, and used magnetic tape to store information. This computer was capable of performing over 16,000 addition or subtraction operations per second, could read 12,500 digits per second from tape, and had the ability to output 400 digits a second from the punched cards.

IBM started its computer journey with 701 and reached the highest rank among all computer companies worldwide in 2009. This computer played a pivotal role in IBM’s transition from punched-card machines to electronic computers. That being said, this machine did not just facilitate IBM in dominating the mainframe computer market during the 1960s,1970s, and later decades. It also, and quite importantly, brought electronic computing to the world.