The first time I heart IBM 1401 was in CS 149 class. I know the IBM 1401 is the first member of the IBM 1400 series. IBM announced it on October 5, 1959 and withdrawn on February 8, 1971.
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 calculator that still provided a cheaper alternative to IBM's650 and 70x computers. Thousands of 1401s were sold or rented; in fact, it was the first computer to deploy 10000 units. The 1401was a decimal computer, with variable-length words composed of 8-bit bytes containing 6-bit BCD binary coded decimal characters and was intended primarily for business applications. The 1401 were the first in IBM's 1400 series of computers, which later included the 1440, and 1460. Originally programmed only in machine or assembly language or Auto coder, which proved difficult for many people, the 1401 were soon host to one of the earliest high-level business-oriented programming languages, RPG which increased its usability and popularity. Later FORTRAN was added for scientific programming. The 1401 were so popular that 1401 applications were still running in 2000 on 1401 simulators, and this presented a special challenge in the Year-2000 conversion. You can bet that 1960-era programmers with an only few thousand bytes of memory at their disposal didn't "waste core" on 4-digit years.
Very interesting post. I wasn't even aware of the 1401's existence, but it certainly sounds like a major step in computing history. Fortran was a big step as far as programming languages are concerned, so that this computer was a part of its growth and usage is also a significant aspect of the 1401. There were some technical terms that might have been good to provide links to definitions or supporting material for, but otherwise the article flowed well and was interesting to read.
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