Bendix Advert - 1962
From Unknown
Communications Engineered: The Bendix G-20 Computer System
This is one of a small set of adverts from before 1975 - the dawn of microcomputers - which help set the scene.
Hot on the heels of Bendix's valve-based G-15 computer came the G-20, built with transistorised modules. It had memory comprising 32,000 32-bit words[1] - analogous to 128K - with a 6μsec cycle time - very loosely equivalent to a 170KHz clock speed.
More revealingly, the 84 milliseconds the G-20 took to divide a number gave meant it could do about 170 thousand floating-point operations a second. In contrast, in 2008, AMD released a graphics card that could do 1 million million floating-point operations in a second.
A dual-CPU version of this system, the G-21, could be used to play the early computer game "Space War", as well as Chess via teletype.
Bendix sold off its computer division to Control Data Corporation (CDC) in 1968. A few years later, a CDC Cyber 176 computer, situated in Arden Hills, Minnesota, was used in a match against internation chess master David Levy at the 1978 Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto.
The Cyber 176 - playing remotely via telephone lines - actually drew its first game and won another, in the end losing 3½ to 1½. It was still an impressive result, and there was a feeling after the match that "there were no losers in Toronto"[2].
Meanwhile, the advert shows a classic "computer the size of a room" in operation at Humble Oil and Refining Company, Houston, Texas.
Date created: 01 July 2012
Sources
Text and otherwise-uncredited photos © nosher.net 2024. Dollar/GBP conversions, where used, assume $1.50 to £1. "Now" prices are calculated dynamically using average RPI per year.