Compsci.210 Why?

CompSci.210 History of Computing

Assoc. Prof. Ian Watson

Why?

n Computers are essential to modern life

n Many of the discoveries and decisions made by the pioneers still underpin modern computers

n As a CS professional you should be familiar with CS history

n There are a lot of myths and misinformation about CS history

The need for computation

n Prior to the industrial revolution there was little need for computation

n Celestial navigation tables

n Artillery firing tables

n Engineering, architecture, insurance, science, manufacturing…

1 A celestial navigation table

Preparing a table

n 2 computers perform the calculations

n A comparator checks their results

n If they agree the table is given to a printer

n The printer typesets the table and prints it

n The comparator checks the printed table against the hand made table

Charles Babbage

n Victorian mathematician and inventor

n “by God, I wish these tables could be made by steam.”

n Decide to build a calculating engine that would use the method of finite differences to solve polynomial equations

2 Method of finite differences

n Consider the equation (2x + 3x) × x

n We can solve for any value of x by simple addition

The Difference Engine #2

n 30,000 mechanical parts

n Never completed in Babbage’s life time

n Finally built by the British Science Museum

The Analytical Engine

n Architecture similar to a modern computer

n Could solve any problem, not just polynomials

n Could be programmed

n Supported branches, conditionals and loops

n Never built

n www.plan28.org

3 Ada Lovelace

n Lady Ada Lovelace hypothesised in 1842 that Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine could manipulate symbols other than numbers and hence perhaps could compose music or poems n The programming language ADA is named after her n But she did not believe the Engine could think for itself

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_lovelace

The Frankenstein myth

n An enduring myth

n Brought to life by Mary Shelley in her gothic novella Frankenstein

n echoed in 2001, Terminator, etc….

n Interesting relationship to the origins of computing & AI

The Frankenstein myth

n Mary Shelley was married to Percy Shelly

n Best friend of Lord George Byron

n Ada Countess of Lovelace was Byron’s daughter

n Ada worked with Charles Babbage

n and hypothesized about AI

4 The Frankenstein myth

n Ada must have read Frankenstein

n The idea of creating a conscious entity that may turn upon us was already in popular culture around 150 years ago

n At the birth of computing & AI

www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html

Guns to typewriters

n After the US Civil War (1865) Remington switched from guns to typewriters

n They used the “qwerty” keyboard

n Ran training schools

n Provided maintenance

n And supplies

The US census

n The 1880 US census employed 400 clerks

n Took 7 years to report the results

n The 1890 census would not report before the 1900 census was held

n A competition was held to mechanise the census

n Herman Hollerith won

5 The US census 1890

n Reported in 6 weeks the US pop. as: 62,622,250. 2½ years for complete report

A Hollerith Electric Tabulating System

The Computing Tabulating Recording Company

n Hollerith founded a company

n Added other business machines to the product range

n In 1914 renamed itself the International Business Machine Corporation - IBM

The Universal Machine

n Not much happened until WWII

n BIG need for computation

n Artillery firing tables

n Aerospace design

n Cyptography

n …

6 The Universal Machine

AAAI Topic http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/History/AMTuring

n In 1930s Alan Turing showed that a very simple computer (a Turing machine) could solve any problem that could be described by symbols n During WWII he worked cracking German codes n He worked on the development of the 1st computer that could store a program at Manchester University n Turing convicted & committed suicide in the 50’s n Turing was pardoned in 2013

www.alanturing.net/

Early Computers

n Babbage’s Analytical Engine (1837)

n Never built, decimal, mechanical, programmable via punch cards

n Universal Turing Machine (1936)

n Theoretical, binary, programmable – the basis of all computers

Early Computers

n Zuse Z3 (1941)

n Binary, electro-mechanical, programmable via punched 35mm film (no conditional branching)

7 Early Computers

n Harvard Mark 1 (early 1940s)

n Decimal, electro-mechanical, programable by punched paper tape (no conditional branching)

Early Computers

n Colossus (1943)

n Binary, electronic, programmable patch cables and switches

Early Computers

n ENIAC (1946)

n Decimal, electronic, programmable patch cables and switches

8 Early Computers

n Manchester Mark 1 “the Baby” (1948)

n binary, electronic, first stored program digital computer

n Led to the Ferranti Mark 1 – first commercial general purpose computer

32 bit words 2’s complement

Vannevar Bush

n Head of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during WWII

n In 1945, Bush published “As We May Think” in which he predicted that:

”…wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified”

The Memex

n “a mesh of associative trails”

n = hypertext – the web

9 LEO – The Lyons Electronic Office

n first computer used for commercial business applications (1951)

n Maurice Wilkes (Cambridge University) commissioned to design the machine

n Multiple I/O methods, punch cards, paper tape and a tabulator

n 2K memory (mercury delay lines) 35-bit words

n First program was for bakery valuations

n Provide computing bureau services to other companies

n Still in use by British Telecom in 1981

LEO – The Lyons Electronic Office

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8K-xbx7jBM

SABRE – American Airlines

n SABRE – Semi-automated Business Research Environment

n Rapid growth in passenger numbers causing the manual ticketing system to collapse

n 1960 IBM built a ticketing system based on 2 IBM 7090 mainframes

n Could handle 80,000+ daily ticketing requests

n Sabre GDS – still being used by 350,000 travel agents, 400 airlines, car rental companies, hotel chains, cruise ships – LastMinute.com, Expedia

10 Claude Shannon

n engineering and maths graduate

n 1938 his MSc “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits” showed that electrical switches could implement boolean algebra and binary arithmetic

n The most influential MSc thesis in history!

n He invented digital logic, his method replaced the ad hoc methods used before

n Worked on cryptography during WWII

n Then pioneered the study of information theory Watch the video: http://go.shr.lc/1oodYtP

The Birth of Silicon Valley

n … was no accident

n Frederick Terman, Dean of Engineering at Stanford University, established a science and technology park for tech companies adjacent to the Uni in 1951

n A small company called Hewlett Packard was one of the first to arrive helped by venture capitol from the Uni

“When we set out to create a community of technical scholars in Silicon Valley, there wasn't much here and the rest of the world looked awfully big. Now a lot of the rest of the world is here."

The Birth of Silicon Valley

n … was no accident

n Stanford established a consultancy firm the Stanford Research Institute (SRI)

n SRI now employs ~1,700 people, has 1,000+ patents and a revenue of over $500 million

n SRI in the 1960s embraced the San Francisco counter-culture

n Techno-hippies experimented with psychedelic drugs and new technology

n SRI pioneered the Silicon Valley ethos of geeks being cool

11 The Mother of All Demos

n Doug Englebart established the Augmentation Research Centre at SRI

n Invented the mouse, bit mapped graphical displays, a collaborative networking environment, video conferencing and hypertext (derived from Vannevar Bush’s Memex)

n On Dec 9 1968 he gave “The Mother of all Demos” to an audience in San Francisco

n Watch the demo http://go.shr.lc/1nYcExL

The Stanford AI Lab

n John McCarthy founded SAIL in 1968

n He coined “Artificial Intelligence”

n Englebart wanted to “augment” human’s McCarthy wanted to replace them

n McCarthy helped design UNIX at Bell Labs and believed computing power would become a utility like electricity

n Developed A* used in your GPS satnav for route planning

n Pioneered robotics with Shakey

Xerox PARC

n Interested in the “office of the future”

n Opened a research centre on the West Coast removed from head office

n They invented:

n The GUI

n WISWYG word processing

n Ethernet

n Postscript

n The laser printer

n Object oriented programming

n The personal computer

n They commercialised none of it!!!

12 Xerox PARC

n Alan Kay

n Xerox Park employee

n Atari employee

n MIT adjunct Professor

n Jazz quitarist

n “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”

n “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”

Your first computer…

n The MITS Altair 8800

n Sold by mail order in Jan 1975

n As a kit set for $439

n No keyboard

n No screen

n No printer

n A Harvard student quit to write software for the Altair

“Micro-Soft”

n Bill Gates started programming in school

n Quit Harvard to create BASIC for the Altair

n And a Lunar Lander game

13 Apple

n Two friends Steve “Woz” Wozniak and Steve Jobs started by building a selling a device for phone phreaking

n In 1976 Woz built the Apple I and they started selling them as a kit for $666.66

n BYO keyboard and home TV

n The Apple II was released in 1977

n Sold for 15 years!

14 The IBM PC

n In 1981 IBM launched the PC to compete with the Apple II

n Invited Microsoft to make its operating system

n Licensed MSDOS from Microsoft

n IBM allowed others to “clone” the PCs hardware

n Compaq, HP and others quickly flooded the market

“My own IBM computer. Imagine that!”

The Macintosh

n Steve Jobs was working on the Lisa a successor to the Apple II

n He visited Zerox PARC and was shown the Star with its GUI

n Started working an a secret project that would become the Macintosh

n Released on January 1984 st n 1 mass-market computer with a GUI and mouse

The Macintosh

n 128k

n No hard drive!!!

n Included MacWrite and MacPaint

n Cost $1,995

n In 1985 the Apple LaserWriter and Adobe PageMaker were released

n Desktop publishing became the Mac’s killer app

n Mac 512k launched 1985 for $3,195

n Microsoft Windows 3.0 released 1990

15 Windows

n Windows 3.0 was first fully functional version

n Previous version were DOS shells

n Quickly became the dominant OS

n Microsoft provided the OS and a complete range of productivity apps (MS Office)

n Internet Explorer released with Win95

n Started the “browser wars”

n Steve Jobs forced out of Apple in 1985

n Starts NeXT Computers

n Powerful computer workstations for higher education and business

n innovative object-oriented NeXTSTEP OS and development environment OpenStep

n Buys Pixar (for their computers)

WWW

n Invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN

n An implementation of hypertext

n No permission required to link to a webpage

n Public domain

n Free

n http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

Mobile computing

n 2007 Apple release the iPhone

n Smartphone combined:

n Cell phone

n Camera

n MP3 player

n Personal digital assistant

n Web browser

n App store

n Revolutionary!