Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2020 08:05:02 +0000
<p>The computing industry started booming after World War II. General Electric’s CEO refused to enter that market. But a small team of rebel employees bent the rules to forge on in secret. They created the GE 225. It was a giant leap in engineering that pushed computing from a niche market to the mainstream—sowing the seeds for today’s tech industry. Before the creation of general-purpose mainframes, computers were often built to perform a single function. <a href="https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/ocasio_william.aspx">William Ocasio</a> recalls how GE’s first specialized computers, the ERMA, helped banks process thousands of transactions per day. <a href="https://merage.uci.edu/research-faculty/faculty-directory/John-Joseph.html">John Joseph</a> recounts how a few key GE employees hoodwinked their CEO into creating a computing department. <a href="https://twitter.com/tomkellner?lang=en">Tomas Kellner</a> explains how their work resulted in a revolutionary machine—the GE 225. And <a href="http://joyrankin.com/">Joy Lisi Rankin</a> describes how engineers at Dartmouth College adapted the GE 225 for time-sharing and used it to create BASIC—major milestones in making computing more accessible.</p><p> If you want to read up on some of our research on mainframes, you can check out all our bonus material over at <a href="https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes">redhat.com/commandlineheroes </a>. You’ll find extra content for every episode. Follow along with the <a href="https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/season-4/mainframes#transcript-tray">episode transcript</a>.</p>
