Doug Ross @ Journal

Moderately priced computing: 14 May 1952

This is some old-school computing. Ed Thelen's site represents a cyber-museum of antiquated and long-forgotten computing technology and is well worth visiting.

Until recently, all commercially available general purpose automatic digital computers were large and cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Within the past year, however, a number of manufacturers have developed smaller, more compact (usually slower) automatic computers for sale at less than one hundred thousand dollars. Nearly all of these smaller computers use magnetic-drum storage. With this drastic reduction in the cost, it has become possible for agencies with modest budgets to consider acquiring such machines. Interested agencies, therefore, can evaluate the now available machines to determine which, if any, can best satisfy their scientific-computing or data-handling needs...

COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE GENERAL-PURPOSE ELECTRONIC DIGITAL COMPUTERS OF MODERATE PRICE