ABSTRACT
IBM 704 was introduced in 1954. It was the first mass-produced computer with floating-point arithmetic hardware and could execute up to 4000 instructions per second. IBM 704 was a very successful commercial computer. However, after the middle of the 1950s some research projects needed much faster computers. For example, the University of California Radiation Laboratory (UCRL) in Livermore, California, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) wanted high-performance computers for their projects. In April 1955, IBM submitted a proposal to UCRL, but UCRL rejected it, instead getting in contact with Remington Rand (UNIVAC). Then IBM submitted a proposal of STRETCH (also known as IBM 7030) to LASL in 1956, and was awarded the contract with LASL for the high-performance computer system.
