--- title: Powering Up A Pluggable Module From The 1948 IBM 604... description: Ken Shirriff examines and powers up a pluggable vacuum tube module from the 1948 IBM 604 Electronic Calculator. The module contains a thyratron tube used as a... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/powering-up-a-pluggable-module-from-the-1948-ibm-604-electronic-calculator-tjfbmopcs twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Powering Up A Pluggable Module From The 1948 IBM 604 Electronic Calculator | daily.dev og:description: Ken Shirriff examines and powers up a pluggable vacuum tube module from the 1948 IBM 604 Electronic Calculator. The module contains a thyratron tube used as a... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/powering-up-a-pluggable-module-from-the-1948-ibm-604-electronic-calculator-tjfbmopcs og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/TjfBMoPCS.png og:image:alt: Powering Up A Pluggable Module From The 1948 IBM 604 Electronic Calculator og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Powering Up A Pluggable Module From The 1948 IBM 604 Electronic Calculator **[Hackaday](https://daily.dev/sources/hackaday)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Ken Shirriff examines and powers up a pluggable vacuum tube module from the 1948 IBM 604 Electronic Calculator. The module contains a thyratron tube used as a high-current switch. The IBM 604 used around 1250 vacuum tubes across its pluggable modules and sold over 5600 units. A 1954 transistorized prototype led to the IBM 608, the world's first commercial all-transistor calculator. The post traces how pluggable modular architecture pioneered by these early systems persists in modern hardware like RAM slots and hot-swappable CPU modules. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Energizing A Vacuum Tube Flip-Flop Module Of The IBM 604](https://daily.dev/posts/energizing-a-vacuum-tube-flip-flop-module-of-the-ibm-604-ktvr5ua7q) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Energizing a vacuum-tube flip-flop module from a 1948 IBM system](https://daily.dev/posts/energizing-a-vacuum-tube-flip-flop-module-from-a-1948-ibm-system-srore98wj) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The rise and fall of IBM's 4 Pi aerospace computers: an illustrated history](https://daily.dev/posts/the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm-s-4-pi-aerospace-computers-an-illustrated-history-uuy2h8jrt) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#hardware](https://daily.dev/tags/hardware), [#ibm](https://daily.dev/tags/ibm), [#retrocomputing](https://daily.dev/tags/retrocomputing), [#computer-history](https://daily.dev/tags/computer-history) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/powering-up-a-pluggable-module-from-the-1948-ibm-604-electronic-calculator-tjfbmopcs) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Powering Up A Pluggable Module From The 1948 IBM 604 Electronic Calculator","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/powering-up-a-pluggable-module-from-the-1948-ibm-604-electronic-calculator-tjfbmopcs","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/powering-up-a-pluggable-module-from-the-1948-ibm-604-electronic-calculator-tjfbmopcs"},"datePublished":"2026-06-09T05:07:31.336Z","dateModified":"2026-06-09T05:07:49.193Z","description":"Ken Shirriff examines and powers up a pluggable vacuum tube module from the 1948 IBM 604 Electronic Calculator. 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