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The Columbia Difference Tabulator – 1931

The earliest use of the term “super computer” seems to com from the New York World, (“1920” though actually 1929), and was applied  to a unique instrument made by IBM for Columbia University.  The The Columbia Difference Tabulator, completed that year, was nicknamed the “Packard”, after the large, streamlined-but-bulbous American luxury car of enormity.

 And a picture of the great beast, below.

[Picture source:  Columbia University computer history page,  here. .]

“The new machine “mass-produced the sums of products by the method of progressive digiting and read punch cards at the rate of 150 per minute. It contained ten 10-position counters with provision for shifting totals internally from one counter to another – a capability that anticipated a future function of computers.” [9]. The new machine, variously called the “Columbia Machine”, the “Statistical Calculator”, the “Difference Tabulator”, and (because of its massive size) the “Packard“, was delivered and installed in 1931.”–From the Columbia University site, here.

Idea source: Eames, Charles; Eames, Ray (1973). A Computer Perspective. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. p. 95.  More links and references at Columbia University’s computer history page,  here.

Notes: