This triggered a tangential memory of encountering this kind of aerospace computer box.

I was a teenage intern at a very serious software engineering company, which was doing bespoke high-end in-circuit emulators, integrated into a full-lifecycle software engineering platform.

One time I wandered into the hardware engineering area, and there was a customer box looking a bit like the later-model photos in the article, just sitting on an EE bench. (Though my vague memory is that it might've been something like Honeywell or Rockwell?)

As a teen, with so may things to learn about workstation networks and software engineering, and working professionally for the first time, and becoming an adult... It was awhile before I slowly learned who were the customers for all this platform the company developed, for people who make complex, critical systems (e.g., military, aerospace, datacommunications). So it was just more overwhelming wonder: people use our stuff for aircraft and spacecraft?! So cool!

Later in my career, I have more context, to decide the kinds of things I want to work on. I'm also often involved when we start with the understanding of the customer, and the building cool stuff tends to follow that. Some of the AI toys recently elicit some of that earlier wow of everything being new and cool, but now knowing more context, and seeing through some of the current marketing noise.

Cool stuff. Worked next to these one summer at IBM on dev tools that ran on PC. But never knew much about them. They were in the thick aluminum case and you didn't touch them!

Author here: I've finally finished a detailed history of IBM's 4 Pi computers, powering everything from the B-1 bomber to the Space Shuttle. Let me know if you have questions...

Back when I was in the USAF they told us 4 Pi was because it was essentially two IBM 360 mainframes in parallel. Probably BS but that was what we all thought.

Really happy to see this history lesson in any case, I had mostly forgotten about my experiences from the mid 90s.