IBM 603

“[The electronic calculator] impressed me as though somebody had hit me in the head with a hammer.”

“I shared many of Dad’s misgivings, but I was compelled by the tremendous speed of electronic circuits.”

“The 602 and 602A [Calculating Punches] helped, but not by much. But the 604 ate the problem for breakfast, or so it seemed at the time; cost per hour, if the shop had been run for pay, would have been about the same, and the speed was at least six or seven times the 602A, and nearly ten times our vanishing 601s.”

“IBM was in the classic position of the company that gets tunnel vision because of its success … Our business was data processing and not just punch cards.”