This month we continue a series of reprints from the IEEE Global History Network's STARS articles.1 STARS is an online compendium of invited, peer-reviewed articles on the history of major developments in electrical and computer science and technology. Some light editing has been done to make the article more suitable for a journal publication.

Reports on the development and production of the IBM System/360 system processor which was introduced in 1964. The April 1964 announcement of IBM System/360 was revolutionary in content and unprecedented in scope. It replaced all five of IBM's (6-b byte) computer product lines with one strictly compatible family, using a new hybrid-integrated-circuit technology and a new 8-b byte architecture. Six processor models offering a 50-fold performance range were accompanied by 54 different peripheral devices, with a pioneering standard interface providing full interchangeability. The software package included communications network capabilities, 16 different language compilers, and a graduated-function, multiprogramming, disk-based operating system.

Punched card tabulating equipment, invented and developed by Herman Hollerith, was the first mechanized means for compiling and analyzing statistical information. For over half a century, its continued improvement created and expanded the global information processing industry. This month begins a series of reprints from the IEEE Global History Network's STARS articles, which can be found online. STARS is an online compendium of invited, peer-reviewed articles on the history of major developments in electrical and computer science and technology. Some light editing has been done, along with the addition of a few illustrations, to make the article more suitable for a journal publication.1 Punched card tabulating equipment.

An account is given of the evolution and use of the "minimum-linewidth method" for assessing competing integrated circuit technologies, beginning with its use in evaluating thin magnetic-film memory devices in the early 1960s and ending with its use in assessing Josephson-junction devices some twenty years later. From this account, general rules are derived for conducting successful technology assessments.