IBM 704

In 1954 IBM released the next evolution in their 700 series mainframes with the 704. It featured significant improvements over it’s predecessor the 701, including the use of core memory and an expanded instruction set. It wasn’t compatible with it’s older cousin, having a completely new architecture. The 704 was the first mass-produced computer with floating point arithmetic hardware. It did 40k instructions per second and they sold 123 from 1955 to 1960. FORTRAN and LISP were originally developed for the 704. The new instruction set became the basis for the later 700/7000 series systems.