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Mainframe Firsts

Sep 2, 2025

Trivia

Mainframe Firsts Trivia

Sonja Soderlund

Sonja Soderlund is an Oregon-based B2B freelance writer. Whether writing about mainframe computers, educational technology, or sustainable retail, she strives to bring clarity to complex issues. Connect with her or LinkedIn.

Mainframes have a reputation for being rock-solid, reliable…and maybe a little mysterious (to outsiders at least). But behind the green screens and acronyms lies a rich history of innovation that has shaped the modern computing world. 

From groundbreaking hardware designs to early experiments in virtualization and secure processing, mainframes have quietly been first to do many things we now take for granted. This quiz explores some of those key milestones and “firsts” in mainframe technology. 

Whether you’re a seasoned systems programmer or just mainframe-curious, this quiz will test your knowledge of the moments that helped define enterprise computing as we know it!

1. Which IBM mainframe system was the first to support a full range of computing tasks, from small business to scientific work, on a single architecture?

 
 
 
 

2. What was the first widely-used virtual memory operating system for mainframes?

 
 
 
 

3. Which mainframe technology first introduced the concept of logical partitioning (LPAR)?

 
 
 
 

4. What mainframe database system, introduced by IBM in the late 1960s, was one of the first hierarchical database management systems?

 
 
 
 

5. Which programming language, heavily used in mainframe environments, was one of the first to be standardized and widely adopted?

 
 
 
 

6. What IBM technology introduced in 1971 was the first to allow time-sharing on mainframes?

 
 
 
 

7. What was the first commercially available relational database management system (RDBMS) released by IBM?

 
 
 
 

8. Which IBM mainframe processor was the first to include integrated cryptographic hardware for secure processing?

 
 
 
 

9. Which IBM mainframe family first introduced support for several Linux systems?

 
 
 
 

10. What software product, first released in 1968, revolutionized transaction processing on mainframes?

 
 
 
 

1 Comment

  1. Dan Freeman
    Dan Freeman on Sep 17, 2025 at 10:59 am

    Holy crap! I did far better than I figured I would

    Reply

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