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Selected History 1BA6 & Society - Selected History BIBLIOGRAPHY 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

A VERY SELECTED HISTORY OF BIBLIOGRAPHY – The Social Impact Of Computers. R. Rosenberg. Academic Press. (S-LEN 500.4 N22) – The Dream Machine - exploring the age. J. Plafreman & D. Swade. BBC Books 1991. S-LEN 500.4 N11. – Before the Altair: The History of Personal Computing. L. Press. Communications of the ACM, Sept 1993, Vol 36, No. 9, pp27-33. – Accidental Empires. R. Cringely. Penguin, London 1993. S-LEN 608 N21. – The Emperor’s New Mind. R. Penrose. Oxford University Press, 1989. S-LEN 500.15 M997 – The History of Computing Web Site at Virginia Tech. » http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/ – Good timeline » http://www.thocp.net/timeline/timeline.htm/ – Images of machines Manchester Mark I » http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/BriefTimeline.htm www.man.ac.uk/Science_Engineering/CHSTM/nahc.htm – Simthsonian » http://photo2.si.edu/infoage/infoage.html » http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/ BT 1 BT 2

Predictions 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History Pre-computing 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History Pre-computing Some Predictions – “We have a computer here at Cambridge; there is one in – The -B.C. Manchester and there ought to be one in Scotland as well but that is about all.” » Douglas Hartree 1947 quoted in The Dream Machine p 8. 1600-

– "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." » Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., – Schickard gave drawings for a calculating machine to 1977 Keepler in 1623. (Nothing came of it.) – "640K ought to be enough for anybody." » Bill Gates, 1981 – Pascal. The Slide Rule - 1620. Patented a calculating device in 1642. – It was predicted in 1963 that within five years human language translators would – Leibniz. Invented a wheel used for efficient be redundant! multiplication and division (1694). » c.f. The Dream Machine p 149. – Jacquard (1752-1834). Punched cards for controlling the operation of looms.

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Attitudes 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History Babbage 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

ATTITUDES 1792-1871

– “..it is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the – The Difference Engine labour or calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else 1823-1842 if machines were used.” A design (and partial implementation) of a » Leibniz c.f. Rosenberg p53. machine to automatically calculate polynomials (i.e. a – "I wish to God these calculations (for log tables) had been single task machine). executed by steam". – The Analytic Engine 1832- » Babbage. c.f. The Dream Machine page 16. 1871. A design for a machines to solve ANY algebraic equation.

BT 5 BT 6 The Analytic Engine 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History Influence 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

The Analytic Engine Influence

– Its operation was variable and controlled by the sequence or punched cards. Terminology for components store (memory), mill (arithmetic unit (alu)) – NOTE : Babbage was not an influential figure in the punched cards for input output, conditional branching. development of computers.

– The Analytic Engine “....has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do what we know how to order it to perform”. (1816-1852)

» Percy Ludgate an Irish Accountant tried to build his own analytic engine at the start of the 20th century.

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Punched Card 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History Turing 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

Punched Cards (1912-1954)

– The 1890 US census published in the year it was taken. – Turing's Machine: (1936) By way of a solution to a mathematical problem on computability he designed a – Used punched cards (56 hypothetical machine to carry out any . million) to store the data and tabulating machines to manipulate them. – Modern computers are electronic implementations of Universal Turing Machines. – This was the main form of commercial information » See chapter 2 of [Penrose 89] for a good description. processing for the 1st half of » See http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html this century. – Both IBM and ICL had their » http://www.jabberwacky.com/ - a talking bot. origins in companies.

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ASIDE 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History 36-46 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

ASIDE Turing's Test 1936-1946

A machine can be said to think if a human engaged in a (Some of) dialogue with it and a human cannot distinguish, based up the answers alone, which is the human and which is the The First Electronic Machines machine!

See http://www.20q.com/

BT 11 BT 12 Not USA 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History USA 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

USA : – J V Atanasoff: 1939 prototype binary arithmetic electronic digital – Zuse - , Z2 and 1936-44. computer. – Programmable calculators. Suggested using valves. – ENIAC: 1943-46 Mauchly and Eckert. Moore School of University of Pennsylvania. – Work not widely publicised outside of Germany at the » Designed to calculate artillery firing tables. time. 5000 +, 350 *, 38 / operations per second. 20 hours continuous operation. UK: 18k valves, 70k resistors, 10k capacitors. – Colossus: 1943. A single task machine. Re- => re-wire! Code breaking. Used over 1000 valves. – EDVAC (1945): (1903-1957) Suggested that programs could also be stored and manipulated by the machine. – The von Neumann architecture. Memory, ALU, Control and I/O.

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Wilkes 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History Commercialisation 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

Maurice Wilkes: COMMERCIALISATION Cambridge University 1946- – 1946 Eckert and Mauchly leave EDSAC 49-58 academia to set up the Electronic Control Company (ECC). – The first (working) stored program machine. – US Census department sign up to buy an ECC machine Used mercury tubes for memory. that has yet to be built. – Lyons (the London tea house people) start to build their – Programmed using text mnemonics which another own EDVAC type machine. EDSAC program converted into machine code. First model produced in ~1952. Calculated tax, payrolls and tea mixes. – Remington Rand: Buy out the almost bankrupt Ecket- Mauchly in 1950.

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Awesome Machine 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History Semiconductors 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

The Awesome Thinking Semiconductor Technology Machine – In 1952 CBS use a UNIVAC to forecast the results of the presidential election. – . Invented by » Opinion polls rated the result as too close Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain in 1948. to call. – First based machine from – With 8% of the votes counted the UNIVAC S/W correctly predicted that in 1954. Eisenhower would beat Stevenson with 43 – Shockley goes to California to make transistors (1955). states to 5. » Walter Cronkite stated “It is awfully early – Noyce et al leave Shockley and set up Fairchild (1958) but I will go out on a limb….” – Moore's Law (1965) In technology the of components per unit surface area will double – Newspaper headlines the following day each year. spoke of the Awesome Thinking Machine.

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The Technology Cost Curve POLITICS & THE COST CURVE

– Missiles being developed in the arms race needed light computers for guidance. Unit Cost – 1961 JFK starts the race to the moon. Again generating a need for light computers.

Maturity/# units produced

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Applications 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History IBM 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

Early Major Application Areas IBM – See their data processing machine business under threat from UNIVAC. – Produce a Defence Calculator (701) for the U.S. D.O.D. in 1953 (Korean war) and a business version 650) in – Banking: cheque processing. 1954. – 650 used punch cards rather than magnetic tape as they fit more comfortably into existing data processing set-ups. – Airlines: ticket reservation.

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360 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History ASIDE 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

The 360 Mainframe Locations

– 1964 IBM spend $5 billion on developing the – California - sunshine, Stanford university and other 360 hardware and companies. . – The Boston ring road - MIT and DIGITAL. – Successfully marketed as – Cambridge (UK) - Maurice Wilkes et al in Cambridge THE single machine to University. meet all needs. » MicroSoft European Research Institute. – Sets the computing agenda – Ireland (cheap), educated, English speaking labour, until the access to the EU. revolution. » Critical mass of expertise.

BT 23 BT 24 Part II 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History Mainframes 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

PART II The Mainframe Paradigm From Mainframes To PCs Typical 1960s-80's setup – Machines are BIG and expensive, O(million €). Or how IBM, DEC, Apple et al made and lost and fortunes – Housed in special rooms. – Batch processed. Modest terminal interactive access. – Limited application domain - business data processing, scientific/engineering applications, educational. – Mostly stand alone operation, i.e. not networked. – The mystique of the computer room and the computer professionals. – Few organisations totally dependent on the technology.

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http://foodman123.com/ibm709.htm 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History Ireland/TCD 60-70s 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

EARLY IRISH & TCD MACHINES – 1960 ESB IBM 650 – 1962 TCD IBM 1620 £10,000 -40% Discount Decimal, 20K digits ferrite core memory. Table driven arithmetic. IBM 709 Paper tape + typewriter I/O. ~1955 Assembler + FORTRAN. – 1970 TCD's IBM 360 had 256K memory and 14MB disks cost ~500,000£ – 1978 TCD VAX 11/780 512K memory, 2x28MB disk, £250,000

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DEC 2060 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History TODAY 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

Today - Widespread Interactive Distributed Computing – 1,000s of millions of PCs in existence. – Interactive, user friendly, graphical interfaces. – Global high speed computer networks. – Applications - word processing through video games through to GPS. – Widespread use by non technical people. – Deep penetration into almost all organizations with accompanying decision making power shifted from the computer centers to the end users.

Dec 2060, early 1980s – Some traditional human functions performed by DEC 2060 with 1 million 36-bit words of MOS memory, computers - playing chess, making cars etc. PDP-11 front end, PDP-11 sync communications, 1 RP06 176 MB disk, 2 RP07 498MB disks. Running TOPS-20 with FORTRAN-20, COBOL-68/74, BASIC-PLUS-2, CPL-20, and MS (a mail system). http://www.hawaii.edu/infobits/s2000/images/dec2.jpg BT 29 BT 30 Computers in TCD 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History Question 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

Number of Computers in TCD Since 1980 QUESTION

14000 12000 What Happened in the 70s-80s 10000

8000 to bring this unpredicted

6000 change around ?

4000

Number of Computers of Number 2000

0 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 Year BT 31 BT 32

3 Factors 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History uProcessors 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

3 FACTORS I TECHNOLOGY – Silicon Valley provided ICs to be used by computer manufacturers and others in the assembly of complex – I Technology machinery, e.g. mainframes and missiles. micro-processors and networks. – Different ICs had different components to perform different tasks. – II User Interfaces psychology etc. – 1971 Ted Hoff at comes up with the idea of putting enough components on a single chip to make it a viable computer which could be programmed to act as required – III "Adoption” by non computer specialists. by the IC purchaser. – Microprocessor => CPU on a single chip. Add memory chips, controller chips etc. and you have a working computer system!

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Moore’s Law 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History II Interactive 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

II. User Interfaces Moore's Law ('65)

– Command line interfaces and batch processing are not user friendly ways of interacting with a computer. In IC technology the number of components per unit surface area will double every year!

As the number of components increases so does the processing power.

BT 35 BT 36 XEROX PARC 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History XEROX 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

XEROX PARC Other XEROX PARC Developments 1970-1980 – Laser printer. – Afraid of IBM and the paperless office set up the – Local Area Network. Palo Alto Research – SmallTalk (OO) programming environment. Center. – The ALTO personal networked computer using mainframe processing power to – Speculate on what a provide a point and click interface with paperless office might icons, pull down menus, the idea of a look like and what sort of desktop etc. i.e. the modern computing computing infrastructure paradigm. it would have. – Xerox decide there is no demand for such a – Draws on work (of among machine and do not make a product based on others) Jean Piaget a the Alto. Swiss psychologist who » Eventually one appears in the early '80s but did work on child/adult is too expensive.... perception of the world.

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Adoption 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History IBM PC 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

III "Adoption" by non computer THE IBM PC specialists. – Main computer manufacturers not interested in – 1981. Made from off the shelf . components. – In 1974 the Altair "home assembly" based – Intel 8088 processor + 8080 I/O computer is advertised in 'Popular '. Mail order chips. a (small and primitive) computer for $385! – Disk Operating System (PC DOS = – Hobbyists/hackers/techies et al take to microprocessors in MS DOS) and Basic interpreter from a big way. Microsoft. – Commodore PET, Sinclair Spectrum, Radio Shack Tandy, – So "open" was the IBM PC that BBC Micro etc. once the Basic I/O Systems (bios) was reverse engineered it became – Apple II, 48K ram, floppy disk and VisiCalc - a possible for other companies to spreadsheet written by MBA graduates! make clone computers with the same functionality but at a cheaper price!

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MAC 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History KILLER APPLICATIONS 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

The Apple KILLER APPLICATIONS

– Apple hire many Xerox people and bring out an M68000 – An application which is of such use that it will sell the based machine with many of the Alto features. computer on its own. – Lisa was a "workstation" and cost >$10,000. – The simplified MAC at a fraction of the price was "a – For the MAC + postscript printing it was desktop success!“ publishing.

– Apple “1984 Advert” – For the Internet/WWW it is …… » http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/1984.html

BT 41 BT 42 Postscript 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History 1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

POSTSCRIPT PART III – Jim’s Computer Garage » http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw/jcgm-mic.shtml – Ubiquitous computing ??? – ICL bought Lyons. Fujitsu bought ICL. – Steve Jobs 'left' Apple and founded NeXT. – The amount of money spent on PCs, in the USA, surpassed that spent on TVs in 1994. – Intimate computers??? – Bill Gates is the wealthiest man in the world. – Jobs is back at Apple and has turned the company around! – ????? – We survived the “Y2K Bug”. – The bulk of spending on IT is confined to a few developed countries.

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