The Mainframe and Hursley

The story of the mainframe and of System/360 has been covered many times, the links below provide just a few.

The Hursley development team was involved from the early planning stages and was responsible for developing the Model 40. A key player on the team was John Fairclough, who managed the earlier SCAMP project, which contributed significantly to the stored programming memory used in S/360. The Model 40 was the first S/360 to be powered up in the world, at Hursley, and the first to be shipped to a customer. The Computer Conservation Society's bulletin, Resurrection, New Year 2000, contains write-ups from Hursley employees at the time. Hursley also developed the Model 44 and the S/370 Model 135.

 

In early 2014, a warehouse was uncovered in the United States containing a large number of S/360, S/370 and peripherals. Amongst the finds is a Model 40. How this hardware will be managed is still under discussion, and it would be fantastic if we could get this machine back to Hursley. At present this seems unlikely, as there is no funding available for such a task. Ideally we would like to seek a sponsor, should the Model 40 become available to us. We have a few photos of the warehouse contents here. The photo to the right shows the Model 40 console.