Value of computer time (historical)

[Alfred001]

This is a quote from an essay about the history of Project Gutenberg from their website:

 

Project Gutenberg began in 1971 when Michael Hart was given an operator's account with $100,000,000 of computer time in it by the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois.

 

So, apparently at the time computer time was measured in it's value in money, can anyone tell me what that particular amount would have amounted to in terms of time?

 

Does anyone know how many computers there were at the time? What kind of places had computers? I suppose DARPA (or whatever the acronym is) had them, how many universities had them? Did companies have them?

Edited March 17, 2012 by Alfred001

[Xittenn]

Roughly equivalent to a 386 computer running at ~$1,000 to 5,000 /hr, which would make that a hell of a lot of time unless there was 10 or so of them running 24/7.

[Joatmon]

Did companies have them?

 

I was a customer engineer in 1978 working on Univac 1100 series mainframe computers. They were quite common at that time for things like Utility companies and bigger businesses and I think that would have been the case in 1971. A complete installation would cost quite a few million pounds, occupied a couple of rooms and required quite extensive maintenance. Even in 1971 it was a lot less powerful than the laptop I'm using which cost a few hundred pounds!

[John Cuthber]

At least one company had a computer 20 years earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEO_(computer)

[Joatmon]

I was a customer engineer in 1978 working on Univac 1100 series mainframe computers. They were quite common at that time for things like Utility companies and bigger businesses and I think that would have been the case in 1971. A complete installation would cost quite a few million pounds, occupied a couple of rooms and required quite extensive maintenance. Even in 1971 it was a lot less powerful than the laptop I'm using which cost a few hundred pounds!

 

Through friendly operators, he received an account with a virtually unlimited amount of computer time; its value at that time has since been variously estimated at $100,000 or $100,000,000.^[4] Hart has said he wanted to "give back" this gift by doing something that could be considered to be of great value.

 

Not quite what Alfred said. This is an excerpt from the link:-

 

http://en.wikipedia....oject_Gutenberg

 

No doubt he was time sharing, which would be hardly noticed by other users of the machine.

Edited March 17, 2012 by Joatmon

[mathematic]

The use of computers in industry became fairly widespread by the mid fifties. Many large companies had their own, while small companies could rent time at data centers.

[Alfred001]

Thanks for the answers folks!

[khaled]

that's history, in the future we will have a city of data centers in the size of your hand palm