On this day in 1981 IBM retired its last Stretch supercomputer. The Stretch, also known as the IBM 7030 was part of the 7000 series, the company’s first line of transistorized computers. Although they were much faster and more dependable than vacuum tube machines, they failed to deliver the expected performance estimates. Still they were considered the fastest computers for a time, and later became the basis for many other more successful designs. The old Stretch supercomputers were sold to national laboratories and other scientific users.
The console of the Stretch supercomputer or IBM 7030. – Image taken from publicintelligence.net