IBM Introduces Personal Cloud Computing, Today in 1976

Today in 1976, IBM introduced Virtual Storage Personal Computing, “a new program product to allow people with little or no data processing experience to use a computer terminal to solve problems.” The terminals were connected to remote IBM mainframes via telephone lines. From Wikipedia: “In a campus setting, VSPC offered users the ability to create and submit programs to an IBM (or compatible) mainframe without using punched cards, though the programs were still submitted as card images, and programs so submitted needed all the usual IBM Job Control Language (JCL) statements to access the mainframe batch submission and resource allocation processes. Output from a job submitted through VSPC could be routed to a printer, or back to the user’s VSPC account, though in general the output would be too wide to easily view on a VSPC terminal.”