I can't contribute much here. What I know I found out from my mentor, Albert E Adams who was a programmer for this beast.

The IBM 7030 was a very large computer for its time. Supposedly only 10 were ever built. Its design goal was to be able to emulate any other computer that had been built. So it was *bit* addressable although its data paths were larger (32, 64, 128 bits?). I only briefly saw the programming guide for this. It was nicknamed "Stretch" because of its physical size.

I think that it was put to use for military and weather apps.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7030