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Even in the 1950s, my mother worked on a machine that could be programmed in octal, but you could change the instruction set with patch cables.
by AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
Even in the 1950s, my mother worked on a machine that could be programmed in octal, but you could change the instruction set with patch cables.
- adrian_b 7mo agoPerhaps one of the IBM 60x programmable calculator series, which were widely used.
- DaleBiagio 7mo agoThat's a fascinating detail! Do you know which machine? The transition period where patch cables and stored programs coexisted is one of the most interesting eras in computing history.
- AnimalMuppet 7mo agoI do not know. I think it was before she first got an assembler. Memory was still tubes, not core. I kind of think she was at White Sands at the time, so... maybe look at what White Sands was using for missile trajectory calculations around 1954 or 1955?
- DaleBiagio 7mo ago[dead]