IBM came to be the leading "computer" manufacturer of the time, although computers were mostly punch card machines that could sort out information by processing decks of punch cards. ... A refinement of such machines was IBM's 650 computer, available circa 1950, which combined a magnetic drum for storing information with punch cards and plugboards. During the late 1940s, the U.S. government sponsored substantial research in computer technology leading to the development of the ENIAC, the first electronic computer utilizing von Neumann's famed "stored program" concept. ... In 1952...

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