if you patched the machine code you could do it in flight. Singer also created software packages for retail applications, which grew out of its installed customer base, the largest of which was at the Wanamaker's department store in Philadelphia. New installations were facilitated by only having to make customizations to the original code rather than having to re-write it from scratch each time, enabling larger installations to be turned up quickly. In England, Welwyn Department Store in Welwyn Garden City (now a branch of John Lewis & Partners) was the first to implement the System Ten as originally planned, and this became a flagship installation. Despite its major thrust as a retail backroom machine, it was still sold as a general purpose business computer, as it did support the common peripherals of the day such as video terminals, punched cards, printers and, later, disk and magnetic tape storage for sales, stock and accounting applications. It eventually faded into history with the end of the minicomputer era, when the PC became the more popular computing platform. References External links Pages from the System 10 Programmer's Reference System 10 description Singer System Ten manuals Minicomputers ICL minicomputers