News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on A Brief History of Computers. Parent comment

Re:A Brief History of Computers by kitd on Saturday July 22, 2023 @12:22PM (#36827518)
From the electrical engineering perspective, the earliest relay and vacuum tube computers were built out of elements developed for radio and telephone exchanges.

Indeed. A "main frame" was originally the housing used for the relay switches in the original telephone exchanges.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:A Brief History of Computers by kens on Saturday July 22, 2023 @04:37PM (#36829651)
I've done a ton of research on this, and "main frame" in the computer sense originated with the IBM 701, which was built from various frames such as the power frame, the storage frame, and the main frame (which performed computation). There is a direct (but complicated) path from this to the modern meaning of "mainframe". The "main distribution frame" in a telephone exchange was unrelated.
[ Parent | on HN ]