POWER is an acronym for Priority Output Writers, Execution processors and input Readers.
International Business Machines released POWER in 1969 following a public introduction at the IBM Wall Street Data Center.
POWER competed with non-IBM products, namely DataCorp's The Spooler and SDI's GRASP.
Input data was asynchronously loaded and directed to the proper partition by Job class.
Once the operator put the proper form in the printer/punch and told power to start (G PUN or G PRT on the console) the device would continue until no more output of that type was available.