mainframen.

1704 J. Howell Pract. Disc. Lord's Day ii. 83 Some such Liturgies of theirs are at this Day extant, interpolated indeed, but for the main Frame of them, unquestionably Primitive, if not Apostolical.

1706 J. Hardingham Accomplish'd Ship-wright iii. 29 Draw a Line with your Rulling Staff from I to K, and that Line shall be the height of your extream breadth in your main Frame.

1713 J. Bulkley Nec. Relig. in Societies 20 As for what may be amiss in the main frame of their Administrations, they will be hereby led to rectify.

1787 W. Hutchinson Treat. Pract. Seamanship (ed. 2) 32 I would propose..the lower part of the keel to be straight, but laid upon blocks forming a concave curve of 3 inches, or of 1 inch for every 30 feet in the extreme length of the keel, under the midship or mainframe.

1801 Philos. Trans. Royal Soc. 91 373 The telescope and the horizon glass are attached, or fixed, to the main frame of the instrument.

1829 London Encycl. XVIII. 91/1 The rails D, D, upon which the carriage runs, are secured to the main frame A A, by screw bolts a, a.

1887 Sci. Amer. 9 July 18/2 The tool carriage..is adapted to slide on guideways on the main frame [of an automatic wood-turning lathe].

1930 Engineering 24 Jan. 102/2 The main frame..consists of two longitudinals or solebars.

1958 Pop. Mech. Apr. 166/2 Two U-shaped brackets bolted to plates that are welded to the rear cross member of the main frame.

1986 Electronic Musician Aug. 68/2 Remove the two screws securing the sideplates and carefully pry them from the main frame.

1994 L. Hall Insight into Steam iii. 20/1 The backbone of the steam loco is known as the ‘main frame’.

2012 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S. 109 16502 The overall architecture of the Sp-Nup120^1-950.Nup37 complex resembles the shape of a bicycle, to which Nup37 provides only the rear wheel and Sp-Nup120^1-950 contributes the main frame and the front wheel.

1957 F. Helwig et al. Coding for MIT-IBM 704 Computer xi. p. XI-1 The main frame of the computer consists of the arithmetic and control elements and the high-speed memory.

1964 Gloss. Data Processing (Honeywell Inc.) 27/1 Main frame, (1) the central processor of the computer system. It contains the main storage, arithmetic unit and special register groups... (2) All that portion of a computer exclusive of the input, output, peripheral and in some instances, storage units.

1970 A. Chandor et al. Dict. Computers 245 Main frame. Originally implied the main framework of a central processing unit on which the arithmetic unit and associated logic circuits were mounted, but now used colloquially to refer to the central processor itself.

1973 Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 211 282 The development of small mainframe computers called ‘minicomputers’.

1973 Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 211 283 Their chief advantages are small size, low price—as low as $2500 for a main frame.

1979 Computers in Shell (Shell Internat. Petroleum Co.) 1 Computers now range from huge main frames, requiring a specially-equipped computer centre with complex and expensive air conditioning and power supplies and highly-trained staff, to desk-top devices powered by pocket-size batteries.

1984 Economist 11 Aug. 77/2 Mainframes, which are used by big businesses for their centralised data processing, are slower than supercomputers (though still very fast).

1992 N.Y. Times 27 Dec. iii. 9/4 Downsizing—the process of shifting critical company applications from a central mainframe to a network of smaller, cheaper computers.

2012 Representations 117 38 Bos used his privilege as a systems administrator..to transform this group of people using a mainframe into a politically engaged community of the like-minded.