1401S, 1470 "last gasp" computers 499

David Wade Fortran that

I was told it was "Fortran II". I didn't like it since I was used used to logical IF statements and 1130 Fortran required the older arithmetic IFs.

The I-O of the machine was incredibly slow. In the past, others here have discussed the internals somewhat, apparently if you knew 1130 buttembler and proper technique you could improve the reading and printing to fit properly within the buttigned cycle.

In hindsight, instead of writing programs to read-calculate-print, I should've read-stored-calc-print to make better use of the machine cycles of the printer and card reader.

The big thing about the 1130 was that it was the cheapest machine IBM had at the time. For teaching high school or college kids Fortran, or serving the computing needs of a small outfit it had good priceperformance for its time. IBM probably continued its educational discount on it for schools which was to its advantage in those days (to develop more programmers for industry). Advanced kids could even learn a little on systems programming playing around with the internals.

In the 1970s other manufacturers came out with minis that supported Fortran and line printing. For small businesses, IBM introduced the System-3, but I don't think IBM did anything more for small engineering needs or the educational market. At that point (mid 1970s) the mini world (PDP, Nova, HP) took over. The Teletype ASR 33 became the output printer of choice in those days.