2. Brief summaryof the history of Computers
It is supplemented by the two PBS documentaries video tapes "Inventing the
Future" And "The Paperback Computer". The chapter highlights some of the
advances to look for in the documentaries.
In particular, when viewing the movies you should look for two things:
• The progression in hardware representation of a bit of data:
1. Vacuum Tubes (1950s) - one bit on the size of a thumb;
2. Transistors (1950s and 1960s) - one bit on the size of a fingernail;
3. Integrated Circuits (1960s and 70s) - thousands of bits on the size of a
hand
4. Silicon computer chips (1970s and on) - millions of bits on the size of
a finger nail.
3. The progression of the ease of use
of computers:
1.Almost impossible to use except
by very patient geniuses
(1950s);
2.Programmable by highly trained
people only (1960s and 1970s);
3.Useable by just about anyone
(1980s and on).
4. First Computer
ENIAC machine
by John W. Mauchly and
J. Presper Eckert at the
University of Pennsylvania.
ENIAC
(Electrical Numerical
Integrator and Calculator)
used a word of 10 decimal
digits instead of binary
ones like previous
automated
calculators/computers.
ENIAC was also the first
machine to use more than
2,000 vacuum tubes, using
nearly 18,000 vacuum
tubes.
5. First Computer
Storage of all those vacuum
tubes and the machinery
required to keep the cool took
up over 167 square meters
(1800 square feet) of floor
space. Nonetheless, it had
punched-card input and
output and arithmetically had
1 multiplier, 1 divider-square
rooter, and 20 adders
employing decimal "ring
counters," which served as
adders and also as quick-
access (0.0002 seconds) read-
write register storage.
6. First Computer
The executable
instructions composing a
program were embodied in
the separate units of
ENIAC, which were plugged
together to form a route
through the machine for
the flow of computations.
These connections had to
be redone for each
different problem,
together with presetting
function tables and
switches
7. First Computer
This "wire-your-own"
instruction technique was
inconvenient, and only
with some license could
ENIAC be considered
programmable; it was,
however, efficient in
handling the particular
programs for which it had
been designed. ENIAC is
generally acknowledged to
be the first successful high-
speed electronic digital
computer (EDC) and was
productively used from
1946 to 1955
8. First Computer
A controversy developed in
1971, however, over the
patentability of ENIAC's basic
digital concepts, the claim
being made that another U.S.
physicist, John V. Atanasoff,
had already used the same
ideas in a simpler vacuum-
tube device he built in the
1930s while at Iowa State
College. In 1973, the court
found in favor of the company
using Atanasoff claim and
Atanasoff received the
acclaim he rightly deserved.
9. Mainframes to PCs
The 1960s saw large mainframe computers
become much more common in large
industries and with the US military and space
program. IBM became the unquestioned
market leader in selling these large,
expensive, error-prone, and very hard to use
machines.
10. Mainframes to PCs
A veritable explosion of personal computers
occurred in the early 1970s, starting with Steve
Jobs and Steve Wozniak exhibiting the first
Apple II at the First West Coast Computer Faire
in San Francisco. The Apple II boasted built-in
BASIC programming language, color graphics,
and a 4100 character memory for only $1298.
Programs and data could be stored on an
everyday audio-cassette recorder. Before the
end of the fair, Wozniak and Jobs had secured
300 orders for the Apple II and from there Apple
just took off
11. Mainframes to PCs
Also introduced in 1977 was the TRS-80.
This was a home computer manufactured by
Tandy Radio Shack. In its second incarnation, the
TRS-80 Model II, came complete with a 64,000
character memory and a disk drive to store
programs and data on. At this time, only Apple
and TRS had machines with disk drives. With the
introduction of the disk drive, personal computer
applications took off as a floppy disk was a most
convenient publishing medium for distribution of
software.
12. Mainframes to PCs
IBM, which up to this time had been producing
mainframes and minicomputers for medium to
large-sized businesses, decided that it had to get
into the act and started working on the Acorn,
which would later be called the IBM PC. The PC
was the first computer designed for the home
market which would feature modular design so
that pieces could easily be added to the
architecture.
13. Mainframes to PCs
Most of the components, surprisingly,
came from outside of IBM, since building it
with IBM parts would have cost too much
for the home computer market. When it
was introduced, the PC came with a
16,000 character memory, keyboard from
an IBM electric typewriter, and a
connection for tape cassette player for
$1265.
14. Mainframes to PCs
By 1984, Apple and IBM had come out with new
models. Apple released the first generation
Macintosh, which was the first computer to come
with a graphical user interface(GUI) and a mouse.
The GUI made the machine much more attractive
to home computer users because it was easy to
use. Sales of the Macintosh soared like nothing
ever seen before. IBM was hot on Apple's tail and
released the 286-AT, which with applications like
Lotus 1-2-3, a spreadsheet, and Microsoft Word,
quickly became the favourite of business concerns.
15. Mainframes to PCs
That brings us up to about ten years ago. Now
people have their own personal graphics
workstations and powerful home computers.
The average computer a person might have in
their home is more powerful by several orders of
magnitude than a machine like ENIAC. The
computer revolution has been the fastest
growing technology in man's history.
16. TIMELINE
• 1939
• Hewlett-Packard is
Founded. David Packard and
Bill Hewlett found Hewlett-
Packard in a Palo Alto,
California garage. Their first
product was the HP 200A
Audio Oscillator, which
rapidly becomes a popular
piece of test equipment for
engineers. Walt Disney
Pictures ordered eight of
the 200B model to use as
sound effects generators for
the 1940 movie “Fantasia.”
17. TIMELINE
• 1940
• The Complex Number Calculator
(CNC) is completed. In 1939, Bell
Telephone Laboratories
completed this calculator,
designed by researcher George
Stibitz. In 1940, Stibitz
demonstrated the CNC at an
American Mathematical Society
conference held at Dartmouth
College. Stibitz stunned the
group by performing calculations
remotely on the CNC (located in
New York City) using a Teletype
connected via special telephone
lines. This is considered to be the
first demonstration of remote
access computing.
18. TIMELINE
• 1941
• KonradZuse finishes the Z3
computer. The Z3 was an early
computer built by German
engineer KonradZuse working in
complete isolation from
developments elsewhere. Using
2,300 relays, the Z3 used
floating point binary arithmetic
and had a 22-bit word length.
The original Z3 was destroyed in
a bombing raid of Berlin in late
1943. However, Zuse later
supervised a reconstruction of
the Z3 in the 1960s which is
currently on display at the
Deutsches Museum in Munich.
19. TIMELINE
• The first Bombe is completed.
Based partly on the design of
the Polish “Bomba,” a
mechanical means of
decrypting Nazi military
communications during WWII,
the British Bombe design was
greatly influenced by the work
of computer pioneer Alan
Turing and others. Many
bombes were built. Together
they dramatically improved the
intelligence gathering and
processing capabilities of Allied
20. TIMELINE
• 1942
• The Atanasoff-Berry Computer
(ABC) is completed. After
successfully demonstrating a
proof-of-concept prototype in
1939, Atanasoff received funds
to build the full-scale
machine. Built at Iowa State
College (now University), the
ABC was designed and built by
Professor John Vincent
Atanasoff and graduate
student Cliff Berry between
1939 and 1942.
21. TIMELINE
• 1942
• The ABC was at the center
of a patent dispute
relating to the invention
of the computer, which
was resolved in 1973
when it was shown that
ENIAC co-designer John
Mauchly had come to
examine the ABC shortly
after it became
functional.
22. TIMELINE
• 1943
• Project Whirlwind begins. During
World War II, the U.S. Navy
approached the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT)
about building a flight simulator
to train bomber crews. The team
first built a large analog
computer, but found it inaccurate
and inflexible. After designers
saw a demonstration of the
ENIAC computer, they decided on
building a digital computer. By
the time the Whirlwind was
completed in 1951, the Navy had
lost interest in the project,
though the U.S. Air Force would
eventually support the project
which would influence the design
of the SAGE program.
23. TIMELINE
• The Relay Interpolator is
completed. The U.S. Army
asked Bell Labs to design a
machine to assist in testing its
M-9 Gun Director. Bell Labs
mathematician George Stibitz
recommended using a relay-
based calculator for the
project. The result was the
Relay Interpolator, later called
the Bell Labs Model II. The
Relay Interpolator used 440
relays and since it was
programmable by paper tape,
it was used for other
applications following
24. TIMELINE
• 1944
• Harvard Mark-1 is
completed. Conceived by
Harvard professor Howard
Aiken, and designed and built
by IBM, the Harvard Mark-1
was a room-sized, relay-based
calculator. The machine had a
fifty-foot long camshaft that
synchronized the machine’s
thousands of component
parts. The Mark-1 was used to
produce mathematical tables
but was soon superseded by
stored program computers.
25. TIMELINE
• The first Colossus is operational
at Bletchley Park. Designed by
British engineer Tommy Flowers,
the Colossus was designed to
break the complex Lorenz ciphers
used by the Nazis during WWII. A
total of ten Colossi were
delivered to Bletchley, each using
1,500 vacuum tubes and a series
of pulleys transported continuous
rolls of punched paper tape
containing possible solutions to a
particular code. Colossus reduced
the time to break Lorenz
messages from weeks to hours.
The machine’s existence was not
made public until the 1970s
26. TIMELINE
• 1945
• John von Neumann wrote
"First Draft of a Report on the
EDVAC" in which he outlined
the architecture of a stored-
program computer. Electronic
storage of programming
information and data
eliminated the need for the
more clumsy methods of
programming, such as
punched paper tape — a
concept that has characterized
mainstream computer
development since 1945
27. TIMELINE
• Hungarian-born von
Neumann demonstrated
prodigious expertise in
hydrodynamics, ballistics,
meteorology, game theory,
statistics, and the use of
mechanical devices for
computation. After the war,
he concentrated on the
development of Princeton´s
Institute for Advanced
Studies computer and its
copies around the world.
28. TIMELINE
• 1946 ENIACI
• In February, the public got its first
glimpse of the ENIAC, a machine built
by John Mauchly and J. Presper
Eckert that improved by 1,000 times
on the speed of its contemporaries.
• Start of project:1943
• Completed: 1946
• Programmed: plug board and
switches
• Speed: 5,000 operations per
second
• Input/output: cards, lights,
switches, plugs
• Floor space: 1,000 square feet
• Project leaders: John Mauchly and J.
Presper Eckert.
29. TIMELINE
• AVIDAC
• An inspiring summer school on
computing at the University of
Pennsylvania´s Moore School of
Electrical Engineering stimulated
construction of stored-program
computers at universities and
research institutions. This free,
public set of lectures inspired the
EDSAC, BINAC, and, later, IAS
machine clones like the AVIDAC.
Here, Warren Kelleher completes
the wiring of the arithmetic unit
components of the AVIDAC at
Argonne National Laboratory.
Robert Dennis installs the inter-
unit wiring as James Woody Jr.
adjusts the deflection control
circuits of the memory unit.
30. TIMELINE
• 1947
The Williams tube won the
race for a practical random-
access memory. Sir Frederick
Williams of Manchester
University modified a cathode-
ray tube to paint dots and
dashes of phosphorescent
electrical charge on the screen,
representing binary ones and
zeros. Vacuum tube machines,
such as the IBM 701, used the
Williams tube as primary
memory.
31. TIMELINE
• On December 23, William
Shockley, Walter Brattain,
and John Bardeen
successfully tested this
point-contact transistor,
setting off the
semiconductor
revolution. Improved
models of the transistor,
developed at AT&T Bell
Laboratories, supplanted
vacuum tubes used on
computers at the time.
32. TIMELINE
• 1948
• IBM´s Selective Sequence
Electronic Calculator computed
scientific data in public display
near the company´s Manhattan
headquarters. Before its
decommissioning in 1952, the
SSEC produced the moon-
position tables used for
plotting the course of the 1969
Apollo flight to the moon.
33. TIMELINE
• Norbert Wiener published
"Cybernetics," a major influence
on later research into artificial
intelligence. He drew on his World
War II experiments with anti-
aircraft systems that anticipated
the course of enemy planes by
interpreting radar images. Wiener
coined the term "cybernetics"
from the Greek word for
"steersman."
34. TIMELINE
• In addition to
"cybernetics," historians
note Wiener for his
analysis of brain waves
and for his exploration of
the similarities between
the human brain and the
modern computing
machine capable of
memory association,
choice, and decision
making.
35. TIMELINE
• Claude Shannon´s "The
Mathematical Theory of
Communication" showed
engineers how to code data
so they could check for
accuracy after transmission
between computers. Shannon
identified the bit as the
fundamental unit of data and,
coincidentally, the basic unit
of computation.
36. TIMELINE
• 1951
• MIT´s Whirlwind
debuted on Edward R. Murrow´s
"See It Now" television series.
Project director Jay Forrester
described the computer as a
"reliable operating system,"
running 35 hours a week at 90-
percent utility using an
electrostatic tube memory.
37. TIMELINE
• England´s first commercial
computer, the Lyons Electronic
Office, solved clerical problems.
The president of Lyons Tea Co.
had the computer, modeled
after the EDSAC, built to solve
the problem of daily scheduling
production and delivery of cakes
to the Lyons tea shops. After the
success of the first LEO, Lyons
went into business
manufacturing computers to
meet the growing need for data
processing systems.
38. TIMELINE
• The UNIVAC I
• delivered to the U.S. Census
Bureau was the first commercial
computer to attract widespread
public attention. Although
manufactured by Remington Rand,
the machine often was mistakenly
referred to as the "IBM UNIVAC."
Remington Rand eventually sold 46
machines at more than $1 million
each.F.O.B. factory $750,000 plus
$185,000 for a high speed printer.
39. TIMELINE
• John von Neumann´s IAS
computer became operational
at the Institute for Advanced
Studies in Princeton, N.J.
Contract obliged the builders to
share their designs with other
research institutes. This
resulted in a number of clones:
the MANIAC at Los Alamos
Scientific Laboratory, the ILLIAC
at the University of Illinois, the
Johnniac at Rand Corp., the
SILLIAC in Australia, and others.
40. TIMELINE
• On election night, November 4,
CBS News borrowed a UNIVAC to
make a scientific prediction of
the outcome of the race for the
presidency between Dwight D.
Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson.
The opinion polls predicted a
landslide in favor of Stevenson,
but the UNIVAC´s analysis of
early returns showed a clear
victory for Eisenhower. Its sharp
divergence from public opinion
made newscasters Walter
Cronkite and Charles Collingwood
question the validity of the
computer´s forecast, so they
postponed announcing UNIVAC´s
prediction until very late.
41. TIMELINE
• Grace Hopper completes the
A-0 Compiler. In 1952,
mathematician Grace Hopper
completed what is
considered to be the first
compiler, a program that
allows a computer user to
use English-like words
instead of numbers. Other
compilers based on A-0
followed: ARITH-MATIC,
MATH-MATIC and FLOW-
MATIC
42. TIMELINE
• 1954A silicon-based junction
transistor, perfected by Gordon
Teal of Texas Instruments Inc.,
brought the price of this
component down to $2.50. A
Texas Instruments news release
from May 10, 1954, read,
"Electronic "brains"
approaching the human brain
in scope and reliability came
much closer to reality today
with the announcement by
Texas Instruments Incorporated
of the first commercial
production of silicon transistors
kernel-sized substitutes for
vacuum tubes."
43. TIMELINE
• The company became a
household name when
the first transistor radio
incorporated Teal´s
invention. The radio,
sold by Regency
Electronics for $50,
launched the world into
a global village of
instant news and pop
music.
44. TIMELINE
• The IBM 650 magnetic
drum calculator
established itself as the
first mass-produced
computer, with the
company selling 450 in
one year. Spinning at
12,500 rpm, the 650´s
magnetic data-storage
drum allowed much
faster access to stored
material than drum
memory machines
45. TIMELINE
• Alan Turing was found dead
at age 42. He had published
his seminal paper, "On
Computable Numbers," in
1936, as well as posing
significant questions about
judging "human intelligence"
and programming and
working on the design of
several computers during
the course of his career.
46. TIMELINE
• A mathematical genius,
Turing proved instrumental in
code-breaking efforts during
World War II. His application
of logic to that realm would
emerge even more
significantly in his
development of the concept
of a "universal machine."
47. TIMELINE
• 1956
Burroughs buys Electrodata. Calculator
manufacturer Burroughs gained entry to the
computer industry by purchasing the
southern California company Electrodata
Corporation. The combined firm became a
giant in the calculating machine business and
expanded into electronics and digital
computers when these technologies
developed. Burroughs created many
computer systems in the 1960s and 1970s
and eventually merged with the makers of
the Sperry Rand (maker of Univac
computers) to form Unisys
48. TIMELINE
• MIT researchers built the TX-0,
the first general-purpose,
programmable computer built
with transistors. For easy
replacement, designers placed
each transistor circuit inside a
"bottle," similar to a vacuum
tube. Constructed at MIT´s
Lincoln Laboratory, the TX-0
moved to the MIT Research
Laboratory of Electronics,
where it hosted some early
imaginative tests of
programming, including a
Western movie shown on TV,
3-D tic-tac-toe, and a maze
49. TIMELINE
• At MIT, researchers began
experimentation on direct
keyboard input on computers,
a precursor to today´s normal
mode of operation. Doug
Ross wrote a memo
advocating direct access in
February; five months later,
the Whirlwind aided in such
an experiment
50. TIMELINE
• The era of magnetic disk storage
dawned with IBM´s shipment of
a 305 RAMAC to Zellerbach Paper
in San Francisco. The IBM 350
disk file served as the storage
component for the Random
Access Method of Accounting
and Control. It consisted of 50
magnetically coated metal
platters with 5 million bytes of
data. The platters, stacked one
on top of the other, rotated with
a common drive shaft.
51. TIMELINE
• 1958
Jack Kilby created the first
integrated circuit at Texas
Instruments to prove that resistors
and capacitors could exist on the
same piece of semiconductor
material. His circuit consisted of a
sliver of germanium with five
components linked by wires.
52. TIMELINE
• SAGE — Semi-Automatic Ground
Environment — linked hundreds of radar
stations in the United States and Canada in
the first large-scale computer
communications network. An operator
directed actions by touching a light gun to
the screen.
The air defense system operated on the
AN/FSQ-7 computer (known as Whirlwind
II during its development at MIT) as its
central computer. Each computer used a
full megawatt of power to drive its 55,000
vacuum tubes, 175,000 diodes and 13,000
transistors.
53. TIMELINE
• 1962
Fairchild Camera and
Instrument Corp. produced
the first widely accepted
epitaxial gold-doped NPN
transistor. The NPN
transistor served as the
industry workhouse for
discrete logic.
54. TIMELINE
• The LINC (Laboratory
Instrumentation Computer)
offered the first real time
laboratory data processing.
Designed by Wesley Clark at
Lincoln Laboratories, Digital
Equipment Corp. later
commercialized it as the LINC-8.
Research faculty came to a
workshop at MIT to build their
own machines, most of which
they used in biomedical studies.
DEC supplied components.
55. TIMELINE
• MIT students Slug Russell, Shag
Graetz, and Alan Kotok wrote
SpaceWar!, considered the first
interactive computer game. First
played at MIT on DEC´s PDP-1,
the large-scope display featured
interactive, shoot´em-up graphics
that inspired future video games.
Dueling players fired at each
other´s spaceships and used
early versions of joysticks to
manipulate away from the
central gravitational force of a
sun as well as from the enemy
ship.
56. TIMELINE
• Published in 1962, Kenneth
Iverson’s book A Programming
Language detailed a form of
mathematical notation that he had
developed in the late 1950s while
an assistant professor at Harvard
University. IBM hired Iverson and it
was there that APL evolved into a
practical programming language.
APL was widely used in scientific,
financial, and especially actuarial
applications. Powerful functions and
operators in APL are expressed with
special characters, resulting in very
concise programs.
