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| | IBM-604 |
 | | In the 604, IBM had to face for the first time a number of problems whose solutions would be important to the computer industry as a whole: the problems of manufacturing, testing, maintaining, and repairing an electronic machine to be produced by the thousands and installed wherever punched-card machines were used for calculating. |
 | | The 604 pluggable unit greatly increased the packing density of electronic equipment; the idea was adopted, with appropriate evolutionary changes, for all subsequent calculators and computers developed by the company. |
 | | As the tube was used in the 604, secondary emission from certain of the grids, due apparently to their contamination during manufacture, caused loss of control of the voltage on those grids. |
| www.ed-thelen.org /comp-hist/IBM-604.html (2897 words) |
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