IBM 704 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The programming languages FORTRAN[5] and LISP[6] were first developed for the 704.
MUSIC, the first computer music program, was developed on the IBM 704 by Max Mathews.
In 1962 physicist John Larry Kelly, Jr created one of the most famous moments in the history ofBell Labs by using an IBM 704 computer to synthesize speech. Kelly’s voice recorder synthesizervocoder recreated the song Daisy Bell, with musical accompaniment from Max Mathews. Arthur C. Clarke was coincidentally visiting friend and colleague John Pierce at the Bell Labs Murray Hill facility at the time of this speech synthesis demonstration, and Clarke was so impressed that six years later he used it in the climactic scene of his novel and screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey,[7] where the HAL 9000 computer sings the same song.[8][contradictory]
Edward O. Thorp, a math instructor at MIT, used the IBM 704 as a research tool to investigate the probabilities of winning while developing his blackjack gaming theory.[9][10] He used FORTRAN to formulate the equations of his research model.
The IBM 704 was used as the official tracker for the Smithsonian Astrophysical ObservatoryOperation Moonwatch in the fall of 1957. See The M.I.T. Computation Center and Operation Moonwatch. IBM provided four staff scientists to aid Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatoryscientists and mathematicians in the calculation of satellite orbits: Dr. Giampiero Rossoni, Dr. John Greenstadt, Thomas Apple and Richard Hatch.