🚀 go-pugleaf

>From article <38...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>,
by ro...@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Keenan Royle):
> The origin of the terms mini- or micro- computer are relatively strait
> forward, but how about mainframe.
> 
> When was this term first used to describe large computers and what the
> hell does it mean anyway?

The physical structure of a large computer does involve a heavy physical
frame, the main (pause) frame, in which smaller frames are mounted to
hold the various backplanes into which circuit boards of one kind or
another are plugged.

Before minicomputers got big (for example, the VAX and high-end PDP-11's,
they tended to have simpler packages, where the backplane was directly
mounted in the cabinet.

When I started computing in 1968, the term mainframe was not yet common.
The term computer, without qualification, was taken to mean mainframe,
and the only qualification anyone used was mini- to refer to smaller
machines.  Only after minicomputers became common in the 1970's, so that
people began to assume mini when someone else mentioned computer, did it
become necessary to say something to distinguish the really big machines
from the (ever larger) minis.
					Doug Jones
					jo...@herky.cs.uiowa.edu