page_title: April 1964
section_title: April 7, 1964 (Tuesday)
hierarchical_section_title: April 1964 / April 7, 1964 (Tuesday)
caption_attribution_description: An entry-level IBM System/360 system, on display at the Computer History Museum.
context_page_description: The following events occurred in April 1964:
context_section_description: IBM announced the System/360 mainframe computer system, the first commercially available system to use micro-miniaturized logic circuits. The new machine, which IBM chairman Thomas J. Watson Jr. described as "the beginning of a new generation—not only of computers—but their application in business, science and government", was shown off at meetings in 165 cities before a total of 100,000 customers. The system could "accept messages from remote locations, no matter what the distance" and could "communicate simultaneously with 248 terminals". The most basic system had a storage of 8 kilobytes and the largest could accommodate 8 megabytes.
  The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Shi'ite Muslim cleric who would eventually be the leader of Iran was released from prison in Tehran and permitted to relocate within to the city of Qom.
  Born: Russell Crowe, New Zealand-born film actor, in Wellington
  Died:
  John Alan West, 53, English crime victim was murdered during a burglary in his home in Workington. Gwynne Owen Evans and Peter Anthony Allen would be convicted of the murder and, on August 13, 1964, would become the last two people to be legally executed in the United Kingdom.
  Bruce W. Klunder, 26, American Presbyterian minister, was accidentally killed in Cleveland, Ohio, while protesting the construction of a new school that would have reinforced the Ohio city's pattern of racially segregated school districting. Klunder had and three other protesters attempted to block the path of a bulldozer by lying down in its path, and the machine backed over him.
caption: The IBM System/360, with 64 KB of core memory
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