Mainframes: The GE 225 and the Birth of BASIC

The computing industry started booming after World War II.
General Electric’s CEO refused to enter that market. But a small
team of rebel employees bent the rules to forge on in secret.
They created the GE 225. It was a giant leap in engineering that
pushed computing from a niche market to the mainstream—sowing the
seeds for today’s tech industry. Before the creation of
general-purpose mainframes, computers were often built to perform
a single function. William Ocasio recalls how GE’s first
specialized computers, the ERMA, helped banks process thousands
of transactions per day. John Joseph recounts how a few key GE
employees hoodwinked their CEO into creating a computing
department. Tomas Kellner explains how their work resulted in a
revolutionary machine—the GE 225. And Joy Lisi Rankin describes
how engineers at Dartmouth College adapted the GE 225 for
time-sharing and used it to create BASIC—major milestones in
making computing more accessible.


 If you want to read up on some of our research on
mainframes, you can check out all our bonus material over at
redhat.com/commandlineheroes . You’ll find extra content for
every episode. Follow along with the episode transcript.