IBM mainframes are 50+ years backwards compatible

[Ian]

I was doing some reading on Wikipedia this morning and found out something quite interesting:

The IBM Z family maintains full backward compatibility. In effect, current systems are the direct, lineal descendants of System/360, announced in 1964, and the System/370 from the 1970s. Many applications written for these systems can still run unmodified on the newest System z over five decades later.

It's perhaps not as surprising that it's possible to visualise a really old mainframe, but I am surprise that there are still systems operating that would require 50+ year old software apps to run. I guess if it works, it works .

 

[Abarbarian]

They still use abacus in some parts of the world which uses the oldest type of computer, the brain.

 

[muckshifter]

You still only need a 286 for word processing, and that's only 'cos of Office. (1986-ish)