Secret Cold War IBM Supercomputer Was Built for One Job

IBM built the NSA’s Harvest computer (IBM 7950), a specialized add-on to the IBM 7030 “Stretch” mainframe, which processed cryptographic data up to 200 times faster than any contemporary machine from 1962 through the mid-1970s. It featured the first automated tape library and a custom language, Alpha, to describe cryptographic problems, enabling continuous, high-speed analysis of massive signal-intelligence streams.