SoylentNews

AnonTechie writes:

50 years ago, IBM created a mainframe that helped send men to the Moon; a ground breaking computer that allowed new levels of compatibility between systems. The System/360 programs still run today.

While IBM had been making its 700 and 7000 Series mainframes for more than a decade, the System/360 "ushered in an era of computer compatibility for the first time, allowing machines across a product line to work with each other," IBM says. "It was the first product family that allowed business data-processing operations to grow from the smallest machine to the largest without the enormous expense of rewriting vital programs... Code written for the smallest member of the family had to be upwardly compatible with each of the family's larger processors. Peripherals such as printers, communications devices, storage, and input output devices had to be compatible across the family."