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IBM System/360

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An IBM System 360 Model 30 computer on display at the Computer History Museum.

IBM System/360

The IBM System/360 was a family of computers made by IBM in 1964. These computers were special because they could do both business and science work. They came in many sizes, from small to very large ones called mainframes. This made it easy to start with a small computer and upgrade later if needed.

The System/360 was led by two important people: Gene Amdahl, who designed it, and Fred Brooks, who managed the project. The slowest model, the Model 30, could do about 34,500 actions each second. A faster model from 1967, the IBM System/360 Model 91, could do up to 16.6 million instructions per second. These computers could store a lot of information, up to 8 MB, though many held less.

The IBM System/360 became very popular because people could start with a small computer and know they could add more power later without changing their programs or equipment. It had a big effect on how computers were made for many years and is often called one of the most successful computers ever. Even today, ideas from the System/360 are still used in modern IBM Z mainframes.

You can see these historic computers at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. They are also at the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland, New Zealand, and the Vienna University of Technology in Austria. Other examples are stored at the University of Western Australia Computer Club and shown at the KCG Computer Museum of Kyoto Computer Gakuin in Japan. Two more are on loan to the System Source Computer Museum in the UK for display and restoration.

Images

An IBM System 360 computer from the 1960s on display at a museum, showing its control panels and related equipment.
An IBM System/360 Model 30 computer on display at the Computer History Museum.
Historical black-and-white photo showing men working in a Volkswagen factory in the 1970s, using early computers.
An operator's panel from the IBM System 360/65, an early computer model from the 1960s.
A historic photo showing people using an IBM System/360 Model 91 computer at NASA in the 1960s.
An old magnetic core memory unit from an IBM mainframe computer, showing early computer technology with visible donut-shaped memory cores.
An old computer system called the IBM System 360/20 TROS, showing its Transformer Read Only Storage.
Technical cables used in IBM System/360 computers, showing how data was connected in early mainframe systems.
Technical components of an old IBM computer system, showing channel terminators used in early mainframe computers.
An IBM Solid Logic Technology circuit card from the 1960s, showing the internal components of early computer hardware.
A close-up of an IBM SLT chip showing tiny transistors and resistors, used to build early computer circuits.
An IBM computer circuit board from the System/360 era, showcasing early Solid Logic Technology (SLT) cards used before integrated circuits became standard.
An old IBM 2311 memory unit from 1964, showing six stacked disk platters used for computer data storage.
Historic computer equipment from the 1960s, including disk drives and a card reader, at the University of Michigan's Computing Center.

Related articles

Mountain View, California
Auckland

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on IBM System/360, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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