Found buried deep in the catacombs, or basement, of the University of Kansas campus is an ancient technology artifact — the university's first computer.
The institution purchased the computer, an IBM 650, in 1957, according to The University Daily Kansan. It was one of only 2,000 made and is considered to be the first mass-produced computer. Unlike today's hand-held computers, this one was 6 feet tall and 5 feet deep, and that was considered small at the time compared with models that took up an entire floor.
The university was fixing to trash the computer when a professor there realized the historical significance of the find. He has begun moving the machine and its multitude of vacuum tubes to his house for restoration. The university won't get much processing power from the machine, though. The computer's memory was only capable of holding 1,000 10-digit numbers. –Dan Carnevale
