IBM 610
Encyclopedia
The IBM 610 Auto-Point Computer was the first personal computer, in the sense of a computer to be used by one person and was controlled by a keyboard. The principal designer of this machine was John Lentz, as part of his work for the Watson Lab at Columbia University
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The IBM 610 was introduced in 1957. It was small enough to easily fit in an office. It was designed to be used in a normal office, without any special electrical or air conditioning requirements. It used vacuum tube
s, a magnetic drum, and punched paper tape
readers and punchers. The input was from a keyboard and output was to an IBM electric typewriter, at eighteen characters per second. It was one of the first (if not the first) computers to be controlled from a keyboard. The term "auto-point" referred to the ability to automatically adjust the decimal point in floating-point arithmetic.
Its price was $55,000, or it could be rented for $1150 per month ($460 academic). A total of 180 units were made. It was a slow and limited computer, and was generally replaced by the IBM 1620
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Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
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The IBM 610 was introduced in 1957. It was small enough to easily fit in an office. It was designed to be used in a normal office, without any special electrical or air conditioning requirements. It used vacuum tube
Vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...
s, a magnetic drum, and punched paper tape
Punched tape
Punched tape or paper tape is an obsolete form of data storage, consisting of a long strip of paper in which holes are punched to store data...
readers and punchers. The input was from a keyboard and output was to an IBM electric typewriter, at eighteen characters per second. It was one of the first (if not the first) computers to be controlled from a keyboard. The term "auto-point" referred to the ability to automatically adjust the decimal point in floating-point arithmetic.
Its price was $55,000, or it could be rented for $1150 per month ($460 academic). A total of 180 units were made. It was a slow and limited computer, and was generally replaced by the IBM 1620
IBM 1620
The IBM 1620 was announced by IBM on October 21, 1959, and marketed as an inexpensive "scientific computer". After a total production of about two thousand machines, it was withdrawn on November 19, 1970...
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