Time's Artzybasheff Anthromorphizes the IBM 702 as a Giant Brain or "Second Superman"

In September 2020 I acquired copy of a reprint commissioned by IBM of the issue of TIME dated March 15, 1955 with a painting by Boris Artzybasheff on the cover depicting Thomas J. Watson, Jr. on the cover in front of an anthropomorphized version of a tape drive for the IBM 702 mainframe computer system. This issue was published when IBM was installing at Monsanto in St. Louis the first 702, its first stored-program computer for business applications, but designated as the "Model 702 Electronic Data Processing Machine." Together with the reprint of the TIME article entitled The Brain Builders there was a form letter from Thomas J. Watson, Jr. directed toward IBM employees and a copy of a fancy hardbound edition of the speeches of the speeches of his father, the founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson. Artzybasheff's cover was reminiscent of his caricature in January 1950 of the Harvard Mark III.

The TIME article began with a quotation from H. G. Wells:

" 'At last I came under a huge archway and beheld the Grand Lunar exalted on his throne in a blaze of incandescent blue ... The quintessential brain looked very much like an opaque, featureless bladder with dim, undulating ghosts of convolutions writhing visibly within ... Tiers of attendants were busy spraying that great brain with a cooling spray, and patting and sustaining it ..." --H. G. Well, The First Men in the Moon.

"Last week,, in a pastel blue and grey room on the fifth floor of a St. Louis office building, the newest Wellsian brain in the earthy world was enthroned. This quintessential brain looked like nothing more than a collection of filing cases, stretching in a 60-ft. semicircle about the room. From with the grey metal cases came a faint humming sound; along the light-studded metallic face were scores of twinkling orange sparks, rippling like waves of thought. As in the Grand lunar's palce, a blaze of light flooded over the pale walls and pillars of rosy pink. Air conditioning filtered out the dust, kept the temperature at an even 75°. Along one end of the chamber was a gleaming plate-glass observation window, through which mere humans— attendants and sightseers— could watch and marvel...."