some huge ROOM with a million wires in it, hooked up to one little typewriter consoles were not in yet. The Operating system communicated with the operator via typewriter.
For some pix & desc see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360
The computer room was always air conditioned I remember one summer day the a/c in the office was out & we all moved in to the commuter room because that was on an independent system