Between 1948 and 1954
John Lentz of the Watson Lab at Columbia University designed the Personal Automatic Computer (PAC) announced by IBM as the 610 Auto-Point in 1957. The 610 was a personal computer before that concept existed because it was designed to be used by someone whose only prior experience with computing might have been with desk calculators. It was marketed as "The only desk-side electronic computer with direct programming and automatic positioning of decimal point."
The 610 was small enough to fit in a normal office; it weighed about 800 pounds (360 kg), and had no air conditioning or temperature requirements. It used vacuum tubes, a magnetic drum, and punched paper tape readers and punchers. The input was from a keyboard, and output was to an IBM electric typewriter, at eighteen characters per second. It was one of the first, if not the first, computers to be controlled from a keyboard. "The term "auto-point" referred to the ability to automatically adjust the decimal point in
floating-point arithmetic". (Wikipedia article on IBM 610, accessed 1-2021).
Only 180 610s were manufactured. The system cost $55,000 and could be leased for $1150 per month ($460 academic).
