The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
The IBM 1401 Data Processing System, a stored-program transistor-logic computer announced October 1959.
At $2500 per month minimally configured, this was IBM’s first affordable general-purpose computer, and it was intended to take the place of all the accounting machines and calculators that still provided a cheaper alternative to IBM’s 650 and 70x computers.
Thousands of 1401s were sold or rented; in fact, it was the first computer to deploy 10000 units.
The 1401 was a decimal (not binary) computer, with variable-length words composed of 8-bit bytes containing 6-bit BCD (binary coded decimal) characters (plus parity and wordmark bits), and was intended primarily for business applications (its scientific counterpart was the 1620).
The 1401 was the first in IBM’s 1400 series of computers, which later included the 1410, 1440, and 1460.
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