University to Purchase Largest IBM Computer

The Computation Laboratory has completed negotiations for the installation of an IBM 7090 computer, the largest calculating machine in current commercial use. It will be available for undergraduate research and laboratory work, and at the level of Engineering Sciences 10, which is open to Freshmen.

Anthony G. Oettinger, chairman of the Faculty Committee on the Harvard computing Center, said the installation of the machine would follow over a year and a half of "horse-trading" with the various companies making computers of this size. He would not disclose the financial conditions of the machine's transfer, he pointed out that a 7090 rented without any educational discount would cost approximately $840,000 each year.

The 7090 will replace the Computation Conservatory present Univac I, which Oettinger described yesterday as obselete. The new machine will have a memory bank 32 times as large as the Univac I's, and will perform operations times as fast.

The machine is currently under the control of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory on Garden St., but is not generally available to Harvard personnel. Oettinger said that the University would be able to start working with the 7090 sometime early next summer.

His committee has as yet made no definite decisions as to how it will budget the computers' operating time. One project is the mathematical simulation for the Business School, of an entire manufacturing company. The computer would be able to tell researchers the exact effects, projected several years in the future, of small changes in variables such as production, price, or labor costs.