Office computing in the 1960's: The IBM 360

Jeffrey L. Rodengen.  The Legend of Grainger.  Fort Lauderdale:  Write Stuff Enterprises, Inc., 2002.

According to Thomas J. Watson Jr's autobiography, Father, Son & Co. (Bantam, 1991), the IBM 360 was so named to suggest the 360 degrees of a circle, implying that it would meet every business and scientific need.  Costing three-quarters of a billion dollars on engineering and four and a half billion dollars on factories, equipment and rental machines, it was the the biggest privately financed commercial project ever undertaken and a huge gamble for IBM.  In fact, in dollar terms the project was substantially larger than the Manhattan Project in World War II.