Mainframes made possible the large-scale computer systems that are now commonplace.
The world’s first automated passenger reservation system, Sabre, provided the basis for the modern web-based travel industry. Launched on two IBM 7090 mainframes, the system, whose first code was written in the 1960s, is today able to process billions of transactions a week.
The UK Met Office has also been using mainframes for 40 years, and still employs them to help produce four million forecasts each day.
Here you can see work taking place on an S/360 model 50.
Nick Heath is a computer science student and was formerly a journalist at TechRepublic and ZDNet.
