IBM 7090 - Notable Applications

Notable Applications

• The Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), one of the first time-sharing operating systems, was developed at MIT's Project MAC using a 7094 with an extra bank of memory, among other modifications.

• NASA used 7090s, and, later, 7094s to control the Mercury and Gemini space flights. The IBM 7094 was used during the Apollo missions including Apollo 11 the moon landing. Goddard Space Flight center operated 3 7094s. During the early Apollo Program, a 7094 was kept operational to run flight planning software that had not yet been ported to mission control's newer System/360 computers.

• Caltech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory had three 7094s in the Space Flight Operations Facility (SFOF, building 230), fed via tape using several 1401s, and two 7094/7044 direct-couple systems (in buildings 125 and 156).

• The US Air Force retired its last 7090s in service from the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System ("BMEWS") in the 1980s after almost 30 years of use.

• The US Navy continued to use a 7094 at Pacific Missile Test Center, Point Mugu, California through much of the 1980s, although a "retirement" ceremony was held in July 1982. Not all of the applications had been ported to its successor, a dual-processor CDC Cyber 175.

• A pair of 7090s in Briarcliff Manor, NY, were the basis for the original version of the SABRE airlines reservation system introduced by American Airlines in 1962.

• In 1961 Alexander Hurwitz used a 7090 to discover two Mersenne primes, with 1281 and 1332 digits - the largest prime numbers known at the time.

• In 1961, the 7094 became the first computer to sing, singing the song Daisy Bell. Vocals were programmed by John Kelly and Carol Lockbaum and the accompaniment was programmed by Max Mathews. This performance was the inspiration for a similar scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

• A 7090/1401 installation is featured in the motion picture Dr. Strangelove, with the 1403 printer playing a pivotal role in the plot (it is the hiding place for a transistor radio; which, when found and turned on by one of the three characters played by Peter Sellers in the film, reveals that the nuclear attack ordered by the deranged Air Force base commander is phony, and must be stopped at all costs).

• The composer Iannis Xenakis wrote his piece "Atrées" using an IBM 7090 at Place Vendôme, Paris.

• Three 7090 systems were imported into and installed in Japan in 1963, one each at Mitsubishi Nuclear Power Co. (whose DP division later merged with Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc.), IBM Japan's data center in Tokyo, and Toshiba in Kawasaki. They were mainly used for scientific computing.