Jan 8, 2019 IBM unveils Q System One, what it calls the first integrated quantum computing system

By 2019 quantum computers existed in several laboratories and companies, but they still looked like experiments: refrigerators, cables and electronics spread across a room and tuned by the people who had built them.

At the CES technology show in Las Vegas in January 2019, IBM presented a different object: the IBM Q System One, a quantum computer sealed together with its cooling and control electronics inside a glass case nine feet tall.

IBM called it the world's first integrated quantum computing system for commercial use, designed for stability, reliability and continuous operation outside the research lab. Customers could not buy one or see it at work, however: like the 2016 machine, it was reached only through IBM's cloud.

Between 1985 and 2019 the title of first quantum computer had been claimed, or could be claimed, for a logic gate, a test tube of molecules, a chip, a sale, a website, a programmable set of ions and a glass case. Which of them deserves it depends on what one means by a computer.

Designed by IBM scientists, systems engineers and industrial designers, IBM Q System One has a sophisticated, modular and compact design optimized for stability, reliability and continuous commercial use. For the first time ever, IBM Q System One enables universal approximate superconducting quantum computers to operate beyond the confines of the research lab.