One of the computing hardware greats - from the New York Times:
Gene Amdahl, Pioneer of Mainframe Computing, Dies at 92
Gene Amdahl, a trailblazer in the design of IBM’s mainframe computers, which became the central nervous system for businesses large and small throughout the world, died on Tuesday at a nursing home in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 92.
The System 360
As a young computer scientist at International Business Machines Corporation in the early 1960s, he played a crucial role in the development of the System/360 series, the most successful line of mainframe computers in IBM’s history. Its architecture influenced computer design for years to come.
The 360 series was not one computer but a family of compatible machines. Computers in the series used processors of different speeds and power, yet all understood a common language.
This allowed customers to purchase a smaller system knowing they could migrate to a larger, more powerful machine if their needs grew, without reprogramming the application software. IBM’s current mainframes can still run some System/360 applications.
Pure genius. My first experience with computers was programming FORTRAN on a 360 - a bit of a stiff learning curve to start out with but I got pretty good at it. Still prefer hardware to software though...