In the early 1970s, several forward-looking elected officials, including the sheriff and the district attorney, decided to merge their information onto one central mainframe database.

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Unlike past models, the new system functions as a hybrid, with a mainframe housed on one side of a cabinet that is twice the size of a refrigerator and space for server blades on the other.

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For example, the microprocessor was hailed as the solution to the world's energy problems--after all, one 8086 had all the power of an IBM mainframe, but used a comparatively infinitesimal amount of electricity.

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The company split itself in two, one half publishing the magazine and the other managing the mainframe database of content that powered the magazine (and eventually, on-screen listings.) Benefitting, perhaps, from the fact that the content of the magazine was highly structured (and repetitive) to begin with, the database part of the company set out to abstract the ongoing production of the listings from their printed form.

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An IBM mainframe keeps tabs on 250, 000 active bidders who have participated in one sale or another over the past two years.

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Analysis by Dr Roberts showed that only one fifteenth of the capacity of a telephone line used to remotely connect to a mainframe was used.

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Just one generation ago the closest thing to an iPod was a Sony Walkman hooked up to an IBM mainframe computer.

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"Rather than manage mainframe and Unix separately, this allows you to manage them more tightly and closely as if they were one, " says Adkins.

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