IBM SSEC

The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) was an electromechanical computer built by IBM. Its design was started in late 1944, and it operated from January 1948 to 1952. It had many of the features of a stored-program computer and was the first operational machine able to treat its instructions as data, but it was not fully electronic. Although the SSEC proved useful for several high-profile applications it soon became obsolete. As the last large electromechanical computer ever built, its greatest success was the publicity it provided for IBM.

During World War II, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) funded and built an Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC) for Howard H. Aiken at Harvard University. The machine, formally dedicated in August 1944, was widely known as the Harvard Mark I. The President of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, Sr., did not like Aiken's press release that gave no credit to IBM for its funding and engineering effort. Watson and Aiken decided to go their separate ways, and IBM began work on a project to build their own larger and more visible machine.

Astronomer Wallace John Eckert of Columbia University provided specifications for the new machine; the project budget of almost $1 million was an immense amount for the time. Francis "Frank" E. Hamilton (1898–1972) supervised both construction of the ASCC as well as its successor.Robert Rex Seeber, Jr. was also hired away from the Harvard group, and became known as the chief architect of the new machine. Modules were manufactured in IBM's facility at Endicott, New York, under Director of Engineering John McPherson after the basic design was ready in December 1945.

The February 1946 announcement of the fully electronic ENIAC energized the project. The new machine, called the IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC), was ready to be installed by August 1947. Watson called such machines calculators because computer then referred to humans employed to perform calculations and he wanted to convey the message that IBM's machines were not designed to replace people. Rather they were designed to help people, by relieving them of drudgery..

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