1. A Typical Set-up: An IBM 650 in 1956:
The rental price for the CPU and power supply was $3,200/month
This was about the complete price of a fully loaded Cadillac
The equivalent of $156,800 in 1998
The CPU was 5ft by 3ft by 6ft and weighed 1966 lbs
The power unit was 5ft by 3ft by 6ft and weighed 2972 lbs
A shirt pocket HP-100 will run on 2 AA cells and is much faster
A card reader/punch weighed 1295 lbs and rented for $550/month
The probable operating ratio was 80% -- not guaranteed
The estimated cost of spare parts was $4000/year ($196,000 in 1998)
The 650 could add or subtract in 1.63 mill-seconds, multiply in ms, and divide in ms
The memory on most systems was magnetic drum with 2000 word capacity
For an additional $1,500/month you could add magnetic core memory of 60 words with access time of .096ms