Friday 13 April 2018

ICL 7500

The International Computers Limited (ICL) 7500 was a range of terminals and workstations that worked with the ICL 2900 series mainframe. The range included the 7502 Modular Terminal System, this distributed basic computing tasks such as data input away from the mainframe and was designed for office environments (think typing pools perhaps).

The typist could tap away without worrying about lag on a slow network, the mainframe only getting involved when the typist got to the end of the line and the data was sent to it. The 7502 had quite a meaty enclosure and could hold up to eight PCBs and dual 8-inch floppy drives. The actual terminal which sat on top was known as the ICL 7561.
Public domain image (from here)