Despite All Obstacles, Many Windows Were Opened At IIT Kanpur When The IBM 1620 Computer Came
In August 1963, an IBM 1620 computer was delivered to IIT Kanpur. Twenty key-punch machines, an IBM 407 accounting system that served as a printer, three 7330 magnetic tape units, a 1622 card input-output unit, and a central processor with 40,000-digit core storage were all present in the IIT Kanpur computer center.
The introduction of the IBM 1620 in India is given more color by Prof. Harry Huskey, who coordinated the computer’s installation alongside his American colleagues Prof. Forman Acton and Prof. Irving Rabinowitz.
Imagine for a moment that in 1963, a cutting-edge digital computer was being transported on bullock carts through a city in India, surviving the inspection of zealous customs officials, and the computer center was preparing to install the computer in traditional Indian fashion while dealing with the monsoon season.
IIT Kanpur’s IBM 7044, PDP-1, and Other Computers
It was agreed that an IBM 7044 computer would go to Kanpur behind the IBM 1620.
Two batch-processing second-generation computers, an IBM 7044/1401 and an IBM 1620 were available at IIT Kanpur in 1968. The IBM 1620 was largely utilized to teach programming to all students, while the IBM 7044/1401 was used for research by staff and students, as well as by a sizable number of external guests from other nearby universities and research labs.
Around this time, Stanford University professor John McCarthy, who is credited with coining the phrase artificial intelligence, paid a visit to the IIT Kanpur computer center and offered to give the time-sharing machine that had been set up at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. As a result, the PDP-1 arrived at IIT Kanpur in 1969 and was deployed there as India’s first time-shared computer. Spacewar!, one of the earliest video games, was created on the PDP-1 at MIT. Many of the IIT Kanpur students became addicted to the game as they played it. A few things weren’t all that different from now!
News Mania Desk
