How much does each computer cost?

Answer 1

That depends on the computer. I have seen prices for different machines that varied from as little as $35 to as high as several tens of millions of dollars.

• The first electronic digital computer, the ABC, was built in 1942 for roughly $6000.
• The first programmable electronic digital computers, the Colossus machines, were built between 1944 and 1945. This project was classified and it does not appear that costs have yet been released.
• The ENIAC cost $500,000.
• The UNIVAC I computers cost over $2,000,000 each to build but the first one was sold in 1951 at a loss for $250,000 because that was the price in the contract. The official selling price of a UNIVAC I system soon rose to about $2,500,000 in order to make some profit.
• Cray-1™ system S/N 1 was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 for $8.8 million.
• etc.