On 5/28/24 13:34, CAREY SCHUG via cctalk wrote:
On 05/28/2024 1:05 PM CDT Sellam Abraham <sellam.ism...@gmail.com> wrote:
What if a corporation in 1970 purchased an IBM 360 for each of their employees for their individual personal use? Now what?
Sellam
1. I don't believe ANYBODY could purchase a 360. You had to lease them.
In the early 1960's, that was quite true. Then, the US
government's General Services Administration got mad about
IBM's pricing and sued IBM. It ended up with the "Consent
Decree" that required IBM to sell anything they made,
unbundle support and hardware, and also help competitors
make plug-compatible hardware. There was a strong move
afoot to break up IBM, like the later Bell system breakup,
but it would have been more complicated and would have
wrecked a national resource.
2. do you know of such a company? (with a significant number of employees, not
a lone entrepreneur). I figure asking means that maybe you do. and since I
believe no 360 but maybe the model 20 (not a real 360) or the model 22 would
plug into household power it seems unlikely unless a tax dodge.
3. if it was one purchase order, it sounds like ONE for the personal computer tally, vs thousands for the not-personal tally. Remember we still need to have enough computers to be 10% (or negotiated percentage) of the total produced. One exception does not change everything.
I seriously doubt any individual bought a NEW IBM 360, but
there are stories about people who bought off-lease or
retired 360's. If I had lived in the Boston area, I would
likely have bought a National Advanced Systems 360 clone.
When NAS closed, there was a broker's warehouse full of
those systems that went for peanuts.
Jon
