It's been said on previous YT videos - the system probally ran civil engineering calculations for building bridges and roads. They may have even been for work in Maryland (the state) where the Bendix 'lives' - at the System Source Museum outside of Baltimore MD. It's down in Texas to get fixed by Usagi.

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forinti 7 months ago | parent [-]

I'm curious about the economics of this machine.

Wikipedia says it could be rented for $1485/mo, and the average salary in 1956 was $3600 or $300/mo, so it would have to replace 5 people (engineers must have earned more), if you don't count the extra cost of software, power, and maintenance.

I remember from a book on Richard Feynman that a classroom full of bright students was about as fast as the computer the Manhattan Project got, except, of course, the computer didn't get tired.

	▲	tengwar2 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		Not really a computer though - they didn't exist in the USA at the time. If I remember correctly it was a series of IBM calculating devices chained together.