Burroughs B220

people standing around a large computer at Georgia Tech in 1959

Burroughs B220 console in computer room at Georgia Tech , Atlanta, March 2, 1959. Originally called the Datatron 220 from ElectroData Corporation before aquisition by Burroughs in 1956. It was a 44-bit decimal computer with 1,800 vacuum tubes and 4,000 words of magnetic core memory, words could store ten decimal digits, character data occupied two digits per character. It weighed about 1.4 t. The use of decimal representation and decimal arithmetic rather than binary on B220 was an attempt to compromise between "scientific" and "business" computing. On the left are Burroughs Paper Tape Punch Model 470 and Paper Tape Photoreader Model 440.