An Important 40th Birthday

It was forty years ago today,
IBM taught the mainframe to play,
It's been goin' in & out of style,
But it's guranteed to stay up a long while,
So may I introduce to you,
The dinosaur that still can roar,
Sgt Watson's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Okay, so its not perfect - but it got us here.

On April 7, 1964, IBM introduced the System 360. Lumps and all, its still around today, and it has had an influence on all computer users since.

Happy Birthday Big Blue, Happy Birthday Big Blue etc, etc, etc.

Next song:

What would you do if I wrote you some code
Would you calculate problems for me.
Lend me some cards and I'll key-punch some code
I just hope that I hit the right key

I get by with my Blue IBM
Yeah, I get by with my Blue IBM


You can tell that I'm a little old - the first computer I ever had any experience with required key-punch cards. That thoroughly discouraged me from becoming a programmer. That might have been a career error, but I'm hanging in there in the electrical business.

You know, there used to be song books full of stuff like this...

I have six guys in my group - four concentrate on mainframe stuff, and two are non-mainframe. There was an article on USATODAY.COM about this today, so I printed it and passed out copies. I told the two midrange guys to study up, 'cause there's gonna be a quiz on Friday!

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oh sorry, that means Happy B-Day 8)