the story over there, nice documentation, from 1959 - 63, with letters from ken olsen and clients as mit.

4k memory 120.000$

pdp-1 in use at the parachuta club, 1962

computer museum has a pdp-1 restauration project up and running | brouhaha

1955 ibm wasn't entered a bid but wasn't able to deliver the desired machine, so proposed a more powerful one. nice turn, but it didn't help. the people from the university of california radiation laboratory didn't swallow it. two years later the supercomputer project became known as stretch aka ibm 7030; memos circulate since november 1955.

Although Stretch was indeed the world's most powerful supercomputer when it was finally introduced, and retained that position until 1964, it fell short of the projected performance. IBM cut the price of the system, originally $13.5 million, nearly in half. | brouhaha

famous and ahead of its time was - regarding to an article in the honeywell computer journal, 1972 - also another machine which listened to the name gamma 60, publicly described in the us in 1958 and was brought to the world by compagnie des machines bull.