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Home , Andrea Cunningham, Computer History Museum, Hartmut Esslinger, Jerry Manock, The Innovators (book), Traitorous eight

2009 C O RE

A Publication of IBM 1401: A Legend Comes Back to Life the The Changing Face of the Mac History Museum The Secret History of Valley

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM A Cover: A typical IBM 1401 installation

This page: Detail of Bosch Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS) computer (p 34)

Opposite: Detail of IBM 026 Printing Card Punch keyboard (p 10)

B CORE 2009 DEPARTMENTS MUSEUM UPDATES EXPLORE THE COLLECTION 2 28 5 7 29 32 CHM Archivists Remarkable People: 2009 Fellow Awards Oral Histories: CHM Collection Ellis D. Kropotechev 3 6 Paul Brainerd and the by the Numbers and Zeus: A CEO’s Letter 36 2009 Salute to the Creation of Aldus 30 Marvelous Time- 4 Mystery Item Semiconductor CPM Network Sharing Device Movie Core Contributors 37 Analyzer Indicator 33 About CHM Circuit and Project Shockley’s book: Network Analyzer Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors 34 Recent Artifact Donations

C O RE 2009

10

10 16 21 24 IBM 1401: A Legend The Changing Face of the Mac Extraordinary Images: The Secret History of Comes Back to Life It’s easy to imagine that bring- When Anything Was Possible Sillicon Valley In 1959, the IBM 1401 intro- ing the Mac to market was the It’s hard to imagine the iconic Few people know that the duced a revolutionary concept: direct result of a clear vision Mac looking any different. professor who helped William magnetic storage. The room- born of . In fact, it But Hartmut Esslinger and Hewlett and David Packard get sized machine became the was a bumpy ride fi lled with frog design came up with their start was also the father most successful in computer indecision, parts scavenged many possible visions. Most of electronic warfare and sig- history. In CHM’s restoration from the medicine cabinet, and of them have never been seen nals intelligence. If things had lab you can create a punched ideas stolen from the kitchen. before. But you can peruse gone as he planned, Silicon card using a carefully restored For a moment in time, any- them now—and imagine what Valley would now be part of the

COVER: IBM ARCHIVES COVER: IBM 1401. thing was possible. might have been. military industrial complex.

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 1 ARCHIVISTS

Editor-in-Chief Karae M. Lisle

Executive Editor Fiona Tang

Archivists: Associate Editor

\’är-k e -vist, -,kı-\- ELIZABETH PAULA Kirsten Tashev A person in charge of BORCHARDT JABLONER Technical Editor archives, which is a place DOCUMENTS ARCHIVIST DIRECTOR OF COLLECTIONS Dag Spicer in which public records or historical documents Editor-at-Large are preserved (Merriam- Christina Tynan-Wood

Webster) Contributors Steve Blank I enjoy providing access to the One of the joys of being an Alex Bochannek Museum’s collection. People archivist is the excitement David A. Laws engaged in researching infor- of consistently learning new Karae M. Lisle mation from our collection things, from the historical Len Shustek Dag Spicer make my work worth it. For tidbits gained while cataloging Fiona Tang example, a hospital was regu- the background stories for new Marcin Wichary larly using a 25 year-old artifacts in our collection. I Heather Yager 4245 printer that had stopped love passing this new knowl- working. Only the Computer edge on to our community as Photographer History Museum had the main- part of the Museum’s mission Marcin Wichary tenance manuals they needed to to “preserve and present.” repair the printer. Access to our Design collection provides tremendous Studio1500 value to our community. HEATHER Website Design Team YAGER Dana Chrisler AUDIOVISUAL ARCHIVIST Ton Luong SARA CHABINO Bob Sanguedolce LOTT computerhistory.org/core SOFTWARE ARCHIVIST

My favorite aspect of fi lm and video archival work is preservation. Most of our new © 2009 Computer History Selecting records of historical video acquisitions are stored in Museum. CHM is a non-profi t 501(c)(3) organization. All value from this age of docu- digital formats, so often we are artwork is copyright of the mentary overabundance is applying traditional archi- Computer History Museum quite challenging, but it is val preservation practices to unless otherwise credited. For also very rewarding. It is the modern formats. By exploring reprints and permissions, contact [email protected]. Museum’s responsibility to ways to expand preservation Subscriptions are a member gather artifacts and stories to principles to encompass digital benefi t. To purchase additional develop a historical collective videos stored on servers, as copies of this issue of Core, memory, and to convey this well as videos tapes stored please visit: magcloud.com. information from generation on shelves, the Museum can Address changes and other written correspondence may to generation—a responsibility preserve historical content for be sent to: Computer History I take very seriously. posterity. Museum, Public Relations email: [email protected]

2 CORE 2009 CEO’S LETTER A RECIPE FOR CREATIVE ACCOMPLISHMENT In his keynote address at the 2009 conference All of this and more is described in our fi rst- of the American Association of Museums, ever performance report, which is included with author Malcolm Gladwell described two the members’ issue of Core. essential qualities for what he called “creative This issue of Core is also a tribute to other accomplishment”—patience and persistence. aspects of computer history that fi t Gladwell’s Citing his 2008 book, Outliers: The Story recipe. We tell stories celebrating the 25th anni- of Success, Gladwell defi ned patience in vivid versary of the and the 50th anniver- terms: “the 10,000 hour rule.” He contends that sary of the , and we survey a small part an individual masters a subject or skill only of “the secret history of ” through by patiently spending a minimum of 10,000 a wonderful essay by Steve Blank. hours on it in focused practice. That’s an average Please accept my sincere thanks for enabling of 3 hours a day—every day—for 10 years. our own brand of creative accomplishment and Persistence is an equally important ingredi- for making these wonderful results possible this ent of “creative accomplishment,” and it makes year. Together, we are building on an already sense. Persistence simply means the ability to great foundation to make the Museum a model battle against, and ultimately overcome, the for the 21st Century. When you visit, as I hope legion of obstacles that stand in the way of creat- you will soon, you’ll fi nd an institution that is ing something worthwhile and enduring. vibrant, growing and optimistic. You can under- I am happy to report to you that 2009 has stand why I’m especially excited to be working been a year of patience and persistence—and at the Museum with you in this endeavor. creative accomplishment—for the Museum as an institution. Thanks to your generous support, Warm Regards, we patiently maintained our equilibrium in an incredibly turbulent economic storm. For the fi scal year ending June 30, we reported our 14th consecutive year of operating in the black. With our donors’ help and commitment, moreover, we were able to do more than simply resist the JOHN C. HOLLAR fi nancial storm. We expanded our public pro- PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER grams to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit, extended the Babbage Engine No. 2 exhibition, opened a new exhibit honoring the history of the semiconductor, and launched the pilot phase of our new education program.

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 3 CONTRIBUTORS

Core 2009 Contributors give us their take on STEVE DAG MARCIN computer history BLANK SPICER WICHARY

What is your favorite Who is your favorite computer Who is your favorite computer technology invention? history unsung hero? history unsung hero? The Integrated Circuit— . He had the Adam Osborne. Just a glimpse Kilby & Noyce vision early on that knowing of an alternative reality where about would be Osborne Computer survived What is your favorite milestone important and, with his wife would make my day. in computer history? Gwen, took on the arduous A tie between: task of transforming the early What is your favorite milestone 1) deciding in in computer history? to start his semiconductor from a dream into reality. The coming of micros—many company in Palo Alto. companies jumped in, writing 2) The “Traitorous 8” leaving What is your favorite and rewriting the rules as they Shockley Semiconductor to technology invention? went along. start Fairchild The 1961 ibm 7030 “Stretch” computer system had features Why is CHM important? Why is CHM important? that we still use today and Because an artifact doesn’t Each generation assumes it is which were absolutely ground- mean much without the slice of inventing the future, with no breaking for the time. history that surrounded its life. recollection that it’s already been done. Why is CHM important? Marcin Wichary is a Senior User We study history not to know Experience Designer at Google and Steve Blank is a lecturer at dates, times and places but to has been a volunteer docent and ’s School of know ourselves. The computer a photographer at the Computer History Museum since 2007. Engineering and Berkeley’s Haas is now part of all our history School of Business. He is a se- and having a place that pre- rial entrepreneur, having spent serves and explains that history nearly 30 years as a founder and executive of high-tech companies is vitally important to knowing in Silicon Valley. who we are.

Dag Spicer is CHM’s Senior Curator.

4 CORE 2009 MUSEUM UPDATES

Vision Gardner Hendrie To explore the computing Sigma Partners revolution and its Charles House worldwide impact on the FELLOW AWARDS 2009 Media X, Stanford human experience University Mission David House To preserve and present Credence Systems for posterity the artifacts Corporation and stories of the infor- For more than 20 years, the mation age Christine Hughes plishments at an annual Gala Achievement Plus Computer History Museum Celebration, which was a well President and CEO Fellow Awards have honored attended celebration this year. John C. Hollar Peter Karpas , Inc. distinguished technology We are pleased to honor the Board of Trustees pioneers for their outstanding Fellow Awards Class of 2009: Leonard Shustek Dave Martin Chairman 280 Capital Partners merits and signifi cant contribu- VenCraft, LLC tions to both the advancement Robert R. Everett for his work John Mashey Dave Anderson Consultant of the computer industry on the mit Whirlwind and Verari Systems, Inc. and to the evolution of the sage computer systems and a Donald J. Massaro . lifetime of directing advanced C. Gordon Bell Sendmail, Inc. Corporation The Hall of Fellows is an research and development Debby Meredith extension of the Computer projects. Grady Booch JAFCO Ventures IBM Thomas J. Watson History Museum’s overarching Ike Nassi Research Center vision to explore the computing Don Chamberlin for his fun- SAP Peggy Burke revolution and its worldwide damental work on Structured Bernard L. Peuto 1185 Design impact on the human experi- Query Language (sql) and Concord Consulting ence. The tradition began database architectures. Lori Kulvin Crawford Dave Rossetti The Yucaipa Companies with our fi rst Fellow, Grace , Inc. Murray Hopper, inventor The Team of , F. Grant Saviers CXO Communication of the compiler, and has grown Marcian “Ted” Hoff, Stanley Adaptec, Inc. (retired) to a distinguished and select Mazor, for Mark Dean John F. Shoch IBM Research group of 47 members. This their work on the 4004, Alloy Ventures award represents the highest the world’s fi rst commercial Donna Dubinsky Stephen Smith achievement in computing, . Numenta Arma Partners honoring the innovators who David Emerson Richard S. Tedlow have forever changed the world We thank the nominators Clarent Corporation Harvard Business School with their accomplishments. of these special pioneers, L. Curt Widdoes, Jr. In keeping with our mission and also thank Ike Nassi, Stanford University Mentor Graphics “to preserve and present for chm Trustee, for chairing the Eric Hahn Mitchell Zimmerman posterity the artifacts and the Fellows Selection Committee. Inventures Group Fenwick & West LLP stories of the Information Nominations for the 2010 Fellows Dotty Hayes Age,” the Computer History are underway. Visit computerhistory. Intuit, Inc. Museum Fellow Awards public- org/fellowawards.. Bill Harding ly recognizes and honors these VantagePoint Venture individuals and their accom- Partners

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 5 at the Computer History Museum enjoying a conversation prior to his talk on the Integrated Circuit.

Phipps and historian Chris- tophe Lécuyer. Joining the leg- ends were industry executives including Brian Halla, ceo of , who spoke at the original site of the offi ce for the ieee Commemo- rative Plaque Unveiling The ic@50 also provided the fi rst public display of the origi- nal Fairchild Semiconductor patent notebooks of Hoerni, Last, Moore, and Noyce. These precious artifacts were on loan from National Semiconductor, the successor to Fairchild Cam- era and Instrument Corp. Also on display was a replica of the original Kilby notebook. Texas Instruments created this replica especially for the ic@50 and later donated it to the Museum’s collection. cnet reported: “…As the week wore on at the Computer History Museum, it became 2009 SALUTE TO THE clear that with a birthday of this magnitude, it was hard SEMICONDUCTOR to overstate the impact of the integrated circuit, not just on the technology industry, but on modern society.” Other Salute to the Semicon- ductor program elements in- More than 1,000 people exhibit, “The Silicon Engine;” cluded Harvard Business School “Integrated circuits attended programs during several chm Presents eve- Professor Richard S. Tedlow, weren’t enthusiasti- the week-long chm ic@50 ning lectures; a series of chm our fi rst scholar in residence, cally embraced by celebration, which marked Soundbytes lunchtime lectures, presenting the Intel 386 busi- the 50th birthday of the inte- a commemorative booklet cel- ness case. Tedlow also spoke to the customer base in grated circuit (ic). ebrating the 50th anniversary the Museum’s student com- the beginning...” The ic@50 events were the of the integrated circuit; and munity about how Andy Grove GORDON MOORE capstone of the Museum’s year- several new educational tours. spurred the company’s growth DURING MAY 8TH IC@50 long Salute to the Semiconduc- The ic@50 events included during his tenure as Intel ceo. LECTURE EVENT AT CHM tor program. This program evening lectures by industry Both events generated stimulat- integrates the Museum’s core pioneers Gordon Moore, ing question and answer ses-

strengths: a special physical , Jay Laythrop, Charles sions for our community. IMAGING ELEGANCE SYNCHRONIZED

6 CORE 2009 550,000 Videos have been viewed on the CHM YouTube channel in just the past year

chm launched the Silicon It features a multi-screen mini operations director. We con- Why did you start Aldus? Engine exhibit in June with theater showing an 8-minute verted from “hot type” compo- This whole idea of page layout multimedia presentations documentary on the invention sition in the composing room was near and dear to my heart examining the invention of the of the transistor, the integrated to “cold type” using computer because I had done it the hard integrated circuit, the evolution circuit, the rapid growth of the typesetting, and I developed the way with exacto knives and ra- of the semiconductor indus- semiconductor and the impact contracts and the specifi cations zor blades and wax on the back try and the impact of these these technologies have made with the various companies. of cold type. Atex was a better technologies on our lives. The on the human experience. The most important was Atex, but very costly system, mostly exhibit draws on the Computer Missed a Salute event? who made a text-editing system used for the larger metropoli- History Museum’s collection of See the videos on chm’s using computer terminals for tan dailies and publications like 300+ oral histories capturing YouTube channel: . reporters to write their stories. Newsweek. It was fairly arcane, the fi rst-person stories from the com/computerhistory It was an exciting time, get- and it could take a month to technology giants. ting grounded at a newspaper learn the commands. that had been there for a long So I took the small nest egg The IC@50 was co-produced by the Computer History Museum, the Chemi- time, and being mentored by from Atex stock plus all my cal Heritage Foundation and the IEEE Santa Clara Valley Section. some excellent people. But it savings—roughly $100,000— Major funding for the Salute to the Semiconductor was generously provided would have been pretty hard to and gave myself six months to by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Intel Corporation. Additional funding for IC@50 events was provided by National Semiconductor. advance there unless I stayed write a business plan and build for another 10 or 15 years. a prototype. The engineers So I joined their supplier, worked for half salary, and I INTERVIEWED BY Atex, and moved from news- worked for no salary. I wrote THE CREATION SUZANNE CROCKER papers to high-tech. Things the business plan, and with the EXCERPTED BY moved a lot faster! At the Star engineers developed the func- OF ALDUS LEN SHUSTEK Tribune, everything required tional specifi cations for what ORAL a proposal and two or three became PageMaker. HISTORIES months to make a decision. During the summer of 1984, At Atex, things were decided I tried to raise money and was around the water cooler, some- told “no” 49 out of 50 times. times in a matter of minutes. I The venture capitalists felt that The Computer History Museum pc-based “desktop publishing” stayed until Atex was purchased a software company didn’t has an active oral history industry. The interview was by Eastman in 1983. have any long-term market program to gather videotaped conducted on May 16, 2006. histories from the pioneers of the information age. These What was your early interviews are a rich aggrega- publishing experience? During the summer of 1984, I tried tion of personal stories that In graduate school, I was the to raise money and was told “no” 49 out are preserved in the collection, editor of the University of of 50 times. The venture capitalists felt transcribed, and made avail- Minnesota Daily, a 35,000- able on the web to researchers, circulation daily with a staff that a software company didn’t have students, and anyone curious of over a hundred students. I any long-term market value. about how invention and entre- learned a lot of valuable lessons preneurship happens. there both on the editorial Presented here are excerpts side as well as from a business from an interview with perspective. Paul Brainerd, the founder I then went to work for the of Aldus, whose fl agship prod- Minneapolis Star Tribune for uct PageMaker established the seven years as assistant to the

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 7 value. Microsoft hadn’t gone two-year process. That trip public yet! We got to our drop- convinced us that we would be When PageMaker was fi rst released at dead date in September with out of business by the time we less than $5,000 left. sold anything. a price of $495, that was almost unheard Finally, we got a commitment That’s why it’s so important of. But (the gross margin) allowed us to from Vanguard in Palo Alto, to talk to customers. They who understood why software loved it, but I realized it wasn’t reinvest in customer service, support, and might have value. We raised the right market. So I totally product development. $864,000 based on our business revised the marketing section plan and a very rough proto- of the business plan to focus type, and we shipped Page- on small businesses, churches, Maker 1.0 the following July. schools, and small publishers. simply dissolved over time. The customer service, support, and We really underestimated other half stayed around but product development. Who was the customer? how fundamental the value made other errors along the way. The problem was that as the When we formed the company proposition was—what the industry started to mature in in January of ‘84, it was the “three-legged stool” of Page- What was the association the early ’90s, it became more professional user. But I made Maker, the Apple LaserWriter with Apple like? about marketing and distribu- one really smart move, which and the Macintosh could do. The alliance was critical to tion. The margins started to was we loaded everybody up in We were providing an order of both companies. For Apple, it go down, and you either had my Saab—myself and the three magnitude gain compared to was critical to the success of to acquire other companies or engineers—and took a trip to the frustrating and costly proof- the Macintosh, and for Aldus, be acquired to continue to be talk with potential customers ing cycle using a typesetter. it was critical to our survival successful. about what we had in mind: a We showed it in January of because we did not have the We had become a public page-layout solution for small 1985 when the LaserWriter budget to bring PageMaker to company in 1987, which funda- newspapers. We learned that all came out, and people couldn’t the broader market. mentally changes a company these newspapers were owned believe that we could do output We developed a whole because suddenly you have by chains or other corporate of that quality. desktop publishing marketing public shareholders that are no entities, and that their decision- plan, which they funded a lot longer interested in long-term making was typically a one-to- Who was the competition? of, including full-page ads in product development. I ended Our fi rst competition, before The Wall Street Journal. Apple up spending way too much of we even released the product, was putting a million dollars my time dealing with attorneys was Microsoft, which we were plus a month into it, and that and shareholders, and less “Technology moves very scared of even then. gave us incredible momentum. time doing the things I really so fast that we often They had acquired a product We could never have done that enjoyed: talking to customers, fail to remember the from a third party, and put without them. understanding their needs, and passion, drama and marketing materials together working with the engineers to describing pretty much exactly What challenges arose? develop the products. intensity of these what we were planning on When PageMaker was fi rst After seven or eight years, moments in computer doing. But the product never released at a price of $495, that I went to the board and said, history. This museum worked. The code was riddled was almost unheard of on the “I’ve really got to work out does this for us.” with bugs and they had to Macintosh. But it allowed us to a transition plan here.” The JAY ADELSON withdraw it from market. have a gross margin of almost initial concept was to fi nd a CEO OF DIGG I’d say about half of our 90 percent and gave us all the replacement, but we tried that competition was like that, and money we needed to reinvest in two times and it didn’t work.

8 CORE 2009 Cover of the box of Pagemaker Version 1.0.

It’s very hard, as you know, transition. I think 99 percent to replace a founder in this of the employees felt that they industry. were treated very fairly. Instead, I actively solicited I then made a clean break Adobe to acquire us. I felt with the business world and that overall there was good technology, and was off on my synergy with our product lines, new career in the non-profi t even though there was some world. I endowed the Brain- overlap with FreeHand and erd Foundation, which gives Adobe Illustrator. out about $3 million a year in support of environmental What made Aldus and Adobe and social programs. It is very compatible? gratifying work because of the At a 30,000 foot level, we had impact it has on people’s lives. similar approaches to running And we are grateful for the a company. But at a working impact that Aldus had. level, there were some very defi - nite philosophical differences. CHM has conducted more than 300 There was a defi nite differ- oral histories since this initiative ence in the customer orienta- began in 2002. The online collection tion. We spent a lot more time provides 150 transcribed interviews talking to customers. Adobe’s available to the public. philosophy was more of an For pictures and full transcript of engineering-based one: if we Brainerd’s oral history, and the full make a great product, like 25-page transcript of Brainerd’s PostScript, sooner or later oral history, visit: computerhistory. org/collections/oralhistories. people will want it. Title: Brainerd (Paul) Oral History But the reason I even consid- CHM#: 102657986 ered Adobe was their underly- Oral history interviews are not ing ethical standard of running scripted, and a transcript of casual a high-quality company that speech is very different from what was fair to their customers and one would write. We have taken the their employees. Unfortunately, liberty of editing and reordering that couldn’t be said of all the freely for presentation. companies in the industry. A lot of thought went into the merger, and I think it was one of the best. We were very honest with employees, and very clear about who would be staying and who would not. We gave a fair severance package, and a bonus to those who needed to stay through the

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 9 IBM 1401 system. Opposite: Detail of IBM 026 Printing Card Punch

FEATURE

The story behind CHM’s IBM 1401 restoration BABY DAG SPICER

10 CORE 2009 CK TO LIFE

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 11 Amid the sound of cards being punched and the corporate outlook that was attuned to its own smell of hydraulic fl uid from its printer, a team of public image, it was known to many ordinary Amer- Museum volunteers is restoring a classic computer icans as well. ibm was conservative and staid. It system from the past in one of chm’s Restoration was a company that sold service—not just machines. Laboratories. Known as the ibm 1401, this computer In a rapidly changing business world, ibm stood was released in 1959 and became one of the most for reliability and was known for solving customer successful in ibm’s history—indeed in the history of problems, not just selling them equipment. computing itself. Never heard of it? That is perhaps ibm based its business—from its origins at the not surprising since it’s 50 years old. At a time when start of the twentieth century until the start of the the world was just beginning to see the potential of electronic computer era—on a piece of stiff paper computers in education, business and government, stock known as a “.” the 1401 was already a home run for ibm. With this The punched card recorded information in the computer, the company rode the wave of moderniza- form of holes punched out of it according to a tion, rapid growth, and optimism about the future unique code. This information could be anything: that was so characteristic of the early 1960s. someone’s paycheck, a mathematical formula, a IBM promotional photo showing typical For nearly the entire twentieth century, ibm was list of names, sales fi gures, or any information that 1401 system. well known in the business world. And, thanks to a could be contained in the punched card’s 80-char-

12 CORE 2009 acter limit. The idea of a card holding one type of IBM Moves to Electronics information—a “unit” of information, if you will— ibm began its electronic computer efforts around the led to the card being known as a unit record and the end of wwii. Most of these early computers were machines that processed these cards were known as gigantic, room-fi lling mainframe machines with a unit record (or punched card) equipment. limited market. Typical clients were the military, Such punched card machines performed basic government departments and well-heeled corpora- but powerful business functions such as sorting, tions, insurance companies and banks. By the late collating, reproducing (making a copy of the card), 1950s, ibm had produced several successful com- and so on. ibm (and its competitors) built machines puters—still large, to be sure—but with increasing that could process this information according to a performance and relatively decreasing cost, a theme pattern set by the user using wires plugged into a that has come to characterize the industry. There control panel. Panels thus represent a set of instruc- were many incompatible systems and virtually no tions or basic form of program. software tools or languages. (, the popular Unit record equipment was used for nearly the scientifi c and engineering programming language, entire twentieth century, albeit in greatly declining would come out of ibm in 1957; the business-ori- numbers after about 1970. ibm made billions of dol- ented language was announced in the early lars leasing equipment while American (and inter- 1960s). Users—even competitors—banded together to national) business adopted the unit record approach share information and control panel-wiring patterns. to their business processes. By one estimate, in 1960 ibm’s unique problem at this time was how to the sale of blank punched cards alone represented move their lucrative punched card business into the nearly 30 percent of ibm’s revenue. electronic stored program era. The stored program was a feature of mainframes but had not trickled

Known as the IBM 1401, this computer was released in 1959 and became one of the most successful in IBM’s history—indeed in the itself.

down to the level of the small to medium-sized business user. The stored program concept evolved from a need to replace the control panel wiring so typical of unit record equipment to the infi nitely more fl exible system of storing instructions inside the computer (as we do today), rather than on punched cards or wiring panels. The computer that allowed ibm to move its customers into the computer era was its Model 1401 Electronic Data Processing System. The 1401 is made up of three parts: a (cpu), a card reader and punch (for reading and writing punched cards), and a high-speed printer. It also came with a magnetic tape drive—a feature that would revolutionize business. IBM ARCHIVES

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 13 separate unit record machines. But, it worked at electronic speeds and had no cumbersome control panel. In all, by the mid-1960s nearly half of all com- puter systems in the world were 1401-type systems.

Back to the CHM Restoration Lab IBM was pleasantly surprised The Lab is a white room, about 40 feet by 30 feet simulating a data processing center from years past. (perhaps shocked) to receive An ibm clock hangs on the wall, a totem of ibm’s 5,200 orders in just the fi rst fi ve varied manufacturing activities over the years and a tip of the hat to verisimilitude. You enter on a steep weeks—more than predicted for ramp built to accommodate a difference in fl oor the entire life of the machine! height because the entire room is built on a raised fl oor beneath which snake the dozens of cables for the system. And there are cables! Each is the thick- The 1401 Arrives ness of a junior-sized baseball bat, is thirty feet long, The 1401 had a complex birth within ibm. One and weighs 20 lbs. or more. These information critical milestone in its creation was the decision to pipelines route the signals to and from the cpu to design a system that used magnetic core memory- the card reader and punch, printer and tape drives. like the ram in today’s computers—instead of the They have fearsome connectors at their ends that usual unit record equipment control panel that require real effort to plug in or disconnect. This required laborious wiring. The result was a system is the Era of Big Iron and ibm was a giant in this that the user interacted with via a small number of industry. Its competitors were derisively known special typed words. This was a big improvement in as “The Seven Dwarves.” usability. In order to program a control panel, you In the Lab are two complete 1401 systems. The needed considerable training and patience. While the fi rst is from Germany; the second—from Connect- 1401 did read and write punched cards, its optional icut—operated as late as 1995. Each machine has magnetic tape system was a real breakthrough. distinctive features but the restoration team settled Magnetic tape could store the equivalent of tens on the latter system as its restoration target. As a of thousands of punched cards on small, portable visitor, you’ll be invited to sit at a ma- reels of tape. People began migrating their punched chine—a typewriter-like device that punches what card information onto tape because it was not only you type onto a card. (The bits that are punched out more convenient, it saved space, time and, most are called “chad.”) Type your name and the key- of all, cost. ibm was pleasantly surprised (perhaps punch whirs to life, clacking away as you type. It’s shocked) to receive 5,200 orders in just the fi rst fi ve an impressive feeling of power as your keystrokes weeks—more than predicted for the entire life of the are converted into punched cards. machine! The 1401 hit a sweet spot in the market. A kindly restoration team member—most likely In fact, it hit two: a former ibm customer engineer as are most of the 1. For users who already had very large systems, team—takes your card and adds it to several others. the 1401 could be used to offl oad many minor or He will feed all these cards into the card reader, then “housekeeping” tasks like printing; and move to the cpu—a cabinet the size of two refrigera- 2. For small and medium-size businesses, the 1401 tors—and push several buttons. Suddenly your cards was a replacement—one that worked at electronic are pulled into the card reader with a whoosh and speeds—for half a dozen separate pieces of punched fl ap-fl ap-fl ap sound. After a few moments this stops card equipment. and the printer, a mechanical beast that can move As the post-war economic boom continued in the 75 inches of a paper in single second, springs to life, ’50s and ’60s, business expanded alongside. Many printing your name in giant letters. You have just new businesses were formed in industry, commerce, used a computer, 1960s style! manufacturing, and many other fi elds. They all Getting a printout of your name is cool but don’t needed a way to manage their work. The 1401 was be misled. The 1401 was a serious business machine. developed to cost about the same as an equivalent It cranked out the payrolls and did the accounting

14 CORE 2009 for tens of thousands of businesses worldwide. old applications and the way they were designed. The Museum is truly fortunate to have these A new generation can learn how people solved machines. And getting one running was no small problems in the early days of computing and appre- feat. It took a team of more than 30 active volun- ciate the creative solutions early computer pioneers teers some 20,000 hours over fi ve years and was found. Perhaps more importantly, in terms of truly a labor of love. Our 1401’s each have over ibm history and the industry as a whole, the 1401 500,000 separate parts, weigh four tons and—in was the product that gave ibm its fi rst realistic their day—cost about $6,500 a month to lease glimpse of the size and importance of the market (about $50,000 a month in today’s dollars). for computers. It caused a paradigm shift in how people worked with computers, whose capabilities To Preserve and Present (and limitations) would soon become the bedrock Having an operating 1401 system is of great histori- of our modern civilization. cal importance. It makes it possible to study these Dag Spicer is CHM’s Senior Curator.

Inside of IBM 026 Printing Card Punch keyboard and overview

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 15 BY MARCIN WICHARY Apple’s Macintosh in its early years THE CHANGING FACE OF THE

MMACFEATURE

16 CORE 2009 Early sketch of a design for the Macintosh, by frog design COURTESY FROG DESIGN COURTESY

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 17 The original Macintosh has been immortalized origins at Xerox parc—was not the original choice. by history as nothing less than a silicon update Raskin later built another computer as an example to the myth of Prometheus—bringing enlightenment of the kind of interface he had in mind. Released in to a world overtaken by monotone, ugly, hard-to- 1987, the Canon Cat did away with folders and fi les use and harder-to-love ibm clones. Hailed by (replaced by one infi nite document), and favored Apple and others as the last true computer revolu- text and keyboard, over graphics and mouse. tion and a machine perfect in every way, it’s easy But in Mac’s case, the mouse wasn’t a given either. to imagine it as a single, unifi ed vision, brought to Early memos mentioned a light pen, a trackball, market with ruthless precision and effi ciency. and a joystick as the pointing devices of choice. In reality, it was anything but. But after being pushed by Steve Jobs toward Doug The fi rst incarnation of the Macintosh, as envi- Engelbart’s invention, the design team built and sioned in early 1979 by Mike Markkula, Apple’s tested over 150 mouse prototypes (the earliest chairman, was a sub-$500 game machine—the ones using a ball from a roll-on deodorant). Even smallest sibling of a troika that also included Apple the decision to remove all buttons but one—often iii and Lisa. , chosen to lead the project, presented as Exhibit a to confi rm Apple’s autocratic had enough prescience (the game-computer price and arbitrary approach to interface design—was wars of the early 1980s drove most of the manufac- the product of many heated discussions. turers to extinction) to counter with something more The initial goal for the Mac’s case was to make ambitious: a friendly, general-purpose computer it highly transportable. Early prototypes resembled for the masses, available as soon as Christmas 1981. Osborne’s later, popular portable, and even included Raskin started by compiling “The Book of Ma- provisions for batteries. As the project shifted from cintosh”— a collection of articulate and infl uential Raskin’s purview to Jobs’, however, this priority

The Macintosh as the documents fi lled with rallying cries such as, “Let’s changed simply to something “different from ev- world knows it, introduced make some affordable computers!” 1 and pondering, erything else.” That included the , whose on January 24, 1984, proved “What will millions of people do with them?” 2 design was derided by Jobs as having a Cro-Magnon its success as a popular The Mac’s cornerstone was to be its friendly user forehead above its screen. 3 But it might still have and interface. However, the familiar black-and-white provided inspiration for the Mac’s eventual anthro- one of the fi rst to feature a mouse and a graphical reinterpretation of a desk top—developed in parallel pomorphic cues: The facade resembling a human user interface. between Lisa and Mac and much enhanced from its face, a smirk of a fl oppy drive, and a chin leaving

18 CORE 2009 APPLE PRODUCT RELEASES Technology and design evolution that has improved from generation to generation: room to slide in the keyboard. The team endured a couple of distractions—the “Cuisinart Mac” (1976) being the most famous of them—but ultimately Apple II (1977) Jerry Manock’s design remained the one chosen Lisa (1983) for the Mac’s premiere. That covers the three most essential components. Macintosh (1984) But pick any other part—even those that seem to Macintosh Portable (1989) scream “Macintosh”—and you might be in for a surprise too. The processor? The 6809e was the Macintosh PowerBook 100 (1991) team’s fi rst choice. The display? Initial plans called Newton MessagePad (1993) for a 4" or 5" screen, with a measly 256×256 resolu- iMac (1998) tion. Storage? The fi nal product is credited with popularizing ’s 3½" disks, but the Mac is iPod (2001) happily seen sporting Lisa’s fi ve-inch Twiggy drive OS X (2001) in its own user manual. Even the name, chosen by Raskin as a tribute iMac G4 (2002) to his favorite variety of apple fruit, was in peril a iMac G5 (2004) couple of times. The advertisements proudly stated, iPhone (2007) “They didn’t call it the qz190, or the Zipchip 5000.” Fortunately, they also didn’t call it Annie, Apple v, or Bicycle— though at some point all of these names were attached to the project. But, as exciting as it is, juggling all these alterna- Macintosh was indeed released as a cheap game tives is, ultimately, pointless. Sure, this might be a console just in time to catch on to the runaway favorite pastime for anyone with an interest in com- popularity of Pac-Man? puter history: Armed with a sometimes-too-intimate But this would be denying the Macintosh its true knowledge of business blunders, close encounters, accomplishment. The fi rst little beige box was fi nally and last-minute plan changes, we enjoy conjuring announced in January 1984, with a $2,495 price alternate realities. What if stayed in his tag. (“The design team was horrifi ed,” wrote Andy offi ce to talk about the operating system for ibm’s Hertzfeld years later. “[This price] felt like a betrayal upcoming personal computer? What if hp decided of everything that we were trying to accomplish.” 4) to release Wozniak’s fi rst machine? What if today’s The launch was a carefully choreographed market- most popular desktop computer was still Altair, and ing event that was as memorable as the product laptop—LisaBook Air? Finally, what if the itself. But what turned out to be just as fascinating

1 Raskin, Jef, “Design Considerations for an Anthropophilic 3 Sculley, John, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple... Journey of adventure, Computer” memorandum, May 28–29, 1979 http://library.stanford. ideas, and the future, New York: Harper & Row, 1987, p. 160 edu/mac/primary/docs/bom/anthrophilic.html 4 Hertzfeld, Andy, Revolution in the Valley: The insanely great story 2 “Computers by the Millions,” internal Apple memorandum, of how the Mac was made, O’Reilly Media, 2004, p. 195 March 18, 1980 http://library.stanford.edu/mac/primary/docs/ http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story= cbm.html Price_Fight.txt

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 19 bring the Macintosh to market was only a foretaste of the Mac’s complicated future and quite possi- bly the most troubled upbringing of any computer product in history. (Even its near deaths in 1985 Hailed by Apple as the last true and 1997 had a precedent; Apple cancelled the Macintosh project in its early stages on at least three revolution and a perfect machine, different occasions.) it’s easy to imagine it as a single, In some sense, however, all of these metamor- unifi ed vision brought to market phoses were entirely superfi cial. The principles that defi ned the Mac’s essence reach much deeper. Those with ruthless precision. In reality, principles haven’t buckled since Raskin and Mark- it was anything but. kula met in 1979 to talk about a “crankless comput- er” (in a nod to Ford’s Model t) in one of the rooms of the then tiny Apple headquarters. as the Mac’s fi ve-year crusade to establish its own The continuing focus on the integrity of the user identity was the apparent eagerness, in the decades experience (Raskin in 1984: “You don’t build a since, to keep throwing it away. hardware box just to suit some hardware engineer The Mac’s prototypical user, originally simply a and then try to cram software into it”6) makes “person in the street,”1 was quickly narrowed down the competition lose as much sleep today as ever, to the “knowledge worker.”5 But the progeny of the prompting nervous responses to the popular “I’m a fi rst Macintosh found a different purpose in life: the Mac, I’m a pc” ads. And those ads have never really classroom companion; the pioneer of the desktop strayed too far from the fi rst marketing campaign, publishing revolution; the multimedia machine; the with all its allusions to George Orwell’s 1984. hub for your digital lifestyle; the mother ship for The message didn’t need to change. Even though your collection of shiny iPods and iPhones. it celebrated its twenty-fi fth birthday this year, and The exterior evolved as well. Cuddly, humane neither its enclosure nor the technology inside it design gave way to sterile principles of Hartmut would be recognizable to the original team, the Mac Esslinger’s corporate Snow White design language never sold its soul. It is designed better and easier and the beige blandness of the Espresso style. to use than its competitors and, astonishingly, even The iMac era alone gave us translucent, colorful with a market share again fl irting with double digits, gumdrop curves and, later, foggy plastics—both still feels like a “computer for the rest of us.”7 admired and copied feverishly by competitors; and And, in the end, this might turn out to be the both incredibly dated to today’s dark glass and Macintosh’s most important legacy. aluminum enclosures. For more information on the Macintosh items Throw in both of the architectural transitions— mentioned in this article, visit CHM’s Catalog Search: to Powerpc in the mid-1990s, and to Intel a decade computerhistory.org/collections/search. later—and the well-publicized drama of fi nding a Marcin Wichary is a Senior User Experience Designer at replacement for the aging operating system, and it’s Google and has been a volunteer docent and a photogra- easy to see that the tumultuous fi ve years it took to pher at the Computer History Museum since 2007.

5 Macintosh Selling Guide, Apple, 1984 7 The expression used in the Macintosh introductory brochure and http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Apple/Apple. other promotional materials http://www.macmothership.com/ Macintosh.1984.102646178.pdf gallery/gallery3.html

6 Markoff, John, and Shapiro, Ezra, “Macintosh’s Other Designers,” 8 Esslinger, Hartmut, A fi ne line: how design strategies are , Issue#3 (August 1984, volume 9, number 8). p. 347 http:// shaping the future of business, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, www.aresluna.org/attached/computerhistory/articles/macintosh- 2009, pp. 7–9 sotherdesigners

20 CORE 2009 EXTRAORDINARY IMAGES WHEN ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE

In what has now become the stuff of myth and legend, Apple’s collaboration with Hartmut Esslinger and his fi rm, frog design, almost certainly defi ned what we now ‘know’ computers look like. Everyone today is familiar with the ubiquitous mouse and standard form of the desktop comput- er. But when Esslinger and Steve Jobs met, anything was still possible. “When I started working for Apple in 1982,” says Esslinger 8 “Steve Jobs’ ambi- tious plan to make Apple into the greatest global consumer technology brand on the planet seemed crazy.” At that time home computers were the dream of only a few nerds. What these computers would look like, how people would input infor- mation into them, even how they would look at the screen was still anyone’s guess. Esslinger and frog created several con- cepts out of foam and cardboard. They developed these ideas in white with spare lines and a clean look. This look came to be known as the “Snow White” design language and it quickly became part of Apple’s Design dna. As is evident from the images that follow, generously provided to us by frog, anything was possible in 1982. Most of these images have never been seen anywhere else, and they represent a fascinating moment in history. They illustrate not only the solutions discovered but also the range of exploration it takes to develop an “iconic

COURTESY FROG DESIGN COURTESY product with no historic precedent.”

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 21 22 CORE 2009 COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 23 BY STEVE BLANK THE SECRET

FEATURE HISTORY OF SILICON VALLEY The role of World War II in the growth of Silicon Valley

24 CORE 2009 For 20 years, Stanford University students knew Fred Terman as a kindly professor who helped William Hewlett and David Packard start a company, Hewlett-Packard. Fewer people knew Terman as the ultimate Cold War “warrior. He was, in fact, the father of electronic warfare and electronic and signals intelligence and a leader in partnering with the nsa and cia to transform Stanford into an integral part of the u.s. intelli- gence community. He also happened to invent the culture of entrepreneurship at Stanford and Silicon Valley. It all started in World War ii.

The Electronic Shield The Allied bombing campaign of Occupied Europe was designed to destroy Nazi Germany’s ability to wage war. But by 1942, Allied airmen were dying in droves. The German electronic air defense system was taking an increasing toll on bombers and crews. The Allies desperately needed to shut down the German Air Defense system. So in 1942, the Allies set up the top secret Harvard Radio Research Lab with the goal of defeating the German Air Defense system. Its 800 staffers invented what would become the signals intelligence and electronic warfare industry. Directing this lab was an professor plucked from a school not yet known as an engineering powerhouse: Fred Terman from Stanford.

The Military/University Partnership World War ii forever changed the military’s relationships with universities. Be- fore World War ii, the military did research and development in its own military labs. But Van- nevar Bush, the head of the Offi ce of Scientifi c Research and Development, enlisted universities into the war effort and funded them directly. During wwii, mit, Cal Tech, Harvard and Columbia received tens of millions of dollars for military r&d, money that forever changed their trajectory in technology. But Stanford, then considered a second-rate engineering school, got almost nothing. Terman, ’s fi rst PhD student, had written a highly-regarded text- book on radio engineering, and so was recruited to run the Harvard Radio Research Lab.

The“Stanford Dish” radio-telescope in the

ISTOCK PHOTO ISTOCK foothills of the University.

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 25 In the mid-1950s, our strategic weapon of choice was the manned bomber. In order for the bombers to penetrate the Soviet air defense system, though, the Strategic Air Command and cia needed details on Soviet radar so they could build jammers. To this end, Terman dedicated Stanford’s engineering resources and made Stanford crucial to the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency for electronics intelligence and signal intelligence. At this moment, the Cold War became an electronic war with the goal of uncovering what was going on inside this closed country.

From Cold War to Entrepreneurship Yet Terman wanted Stanford to focus on advanced research, not the actual production of military systems. So he encouraged his engineering students to start companies that could supply microwave components and intelligence systems to the mili- tary. He encouraged professors to consult for those companies. Getting out in the real world is good for your academic career, he told them. And he made licensing Stanford’s intellectual property possible. These were heretical concepts in the 1950s and ’60s. And they fundamentally changed the Valley into something we recognize today. These ideas caused the Valley to blossom in the mid-1950s into Micro- wave Valley.

CIA/NSA Innovation In the mid-1950s, the cia launched Project Genetrix: They fl ew high altitude balloons—with 350lb cameras as their payloads—across the Soviet Union. They simply popped the balloons up into the jet stream and hoped the balloons would come out at the other end of the Soviet Union. But as the cia was tracking these balloons with radar, it was also picking up an unexpected Soviet Fred Terman in his But Terman returned after the war with the radar signal. Eventually the cia fi gured out that they Stanford University idea of turning Stanford into a center of excellence were getting this signal because a piece of metal in offi ce, ca. 1938 for microwaves and electronics. He started by re- the balloon was accidentally cut to the frequency cruiting 11 members from his Radio Research of a Soviet height-fi nding radar and that signal was Lab. They set up the Electronics Research Lab for being picked up in our receiving radar. basic and unclassifi ed research. In 1946, the Offi ce This lucky accident spawned Project melody. of Naval Research gave them their fi rst contract Every time the Soviets launched an intercontinental to fund Stanford’s research into microwaves ballistic missile (icbm), the cia sent up radar receiv- By 1950, Terman had turned Stanford’s engineer- ers in Iran. And we used the Soviets’ own missile ing department into the mit of the West. telemetry beacon to steer those radars. So every Soviet radar within a thousand miles bounced off Another War and a New Game the Soviet icbm, and the cia tracked their refl ec- In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded its fi rst nuclear tions. This bit of espionage provided intercepts of weapon. In 1950, the Korean War turned the Cold all Soviet missile tracking radars including all their War hot. And the newly formed National Security anti-ballistic missile radars. These receivers were Agency asked Terman’s team to work on classifi ed built and designed at Stanford. intelligence and military programs. Engineering set In the late 1950s, the Soviets had upgraded their up the Applied Electronics lab for classifi ed pro- early warning radar to the Tall King. The cia and grams. Stanford University was now a full, covert Strategic Air Command wanted to know where

partner in government r&d. these radars were and how many there were fi rst. NEWS SERVICE STANFORD COURTESY

26 CORE 2009 Someone realized that like all radars, the Tall established a family offi ce to make investments. King radar signals continued traveling out into Lawrence Rockefeller had the same idea and estab- space. But with the right geometry they bounced off lished his family offi ce. So did other rich industrialists. the moon when it was over the Soviet Union. The These family offi ces were all on the East Coast idea was to point radar dishes at the moon, and and tended to focus their investments there, in a wide then use the moon as a bistatic refl ector and listen variety of industries. for the Tall King signals. About once a month every- But in 1958, after the launch of Sputnik the year thing would line up. earlier, the u.s. government wanted to spur entrepre- But because this idea required very large dishes, neurship. The Small Business Administration (sba) the United States in the late 1950s became very announced it would match every dollar an individu- interested in radio astronomy. Under cover of a civil- al put into a startup. By 1968, 75 percent of venture ian agency, the cia funded the Stanford University capital came from the sba. And, in fact, the idea was dish, attached electronic intelligence receivers to it, so lucrative that corporations set up their own sbas. and borrowed it to search for the Soviet Tall King And Bank of America, Fireman’s Fund, and private (and later Hen House) radars. companies did so as well. It was the Cold War crisis and not profi t that But everyone was still trying to sort out the right motivated Terman—and the newly-formed compa- model for investing. nies of Silicon Valley—in the 1950s and the 1960s. Then in 1978 and 1979, life changed in Silicon The motivation for entrepreneurship was crisis and it Valley when the government made two simple chang- found funding from the military not from industry. es: 1) It slashed capital gains tax—from 50 percent to 28 percent. 2) Pension funds were now allowed Why It’s Called Silicon Valley put up to 10 percent of their holdings into high-risk If it had been up to Terman, Silicon Valley would be ventures—venture capital funds being one of them. known as Microwave Valley. But serendipity arrived And to manage that capital, vcs transitioned to in 1956. William Shockley started Shockley Semi- limited partnerships. The amount of money directed conductor, Silicon Valley’s fi rst chip company. into vcs jumped by a factor of 10 and Silicon Valley’s Shockley had a wwii military background as second engine of entrepreneurship took off by 1979. extensive as Terman’s. He had been director of op- It was, and still is, fueled by profi t. erations research for anti-submarine warfare at Co- So in summary: Terman, Stanford, and our intel- lumbia, head of radar bombing training for the Air ligence agencies spawned the entrepreneurial culture Force, and deputy director of all of weapons r&d in of Silicon Valley. The military primed the pump as the Cold War. Shockley had a reputation for being an investor and customer for key technologies (semi- a terrifi c researcher, an awesome talent spotter, and conductors used in missile guidance systems, com- a terrible manager. One testament to his poor skills puters at nsa and Livermore, and of course, darpa’s as a manager was the infamous “traitorous eight.” interest in packet switching and the Internet.) But In 1957, eight of his best researchers—including venture capital turned the Valley toward volume Gordon Moore and —left Shockley corporate and consumer applications. Semiconductor and founded Fairchild Semiconductor. In the next 20 years, 65 other chip companies start because this one ex-military guy—Shockley—who Terman happened to invent the worked on air to ground radar in World War ii, and culture of entrepreneurship at who happened to manage the team that invented the transistor, started his company in Silicon Valley. Stanford and Silicon Valley. It all started in World War II. Why We Don’t All Work for the Government? Terman may have been motivated by the Cold War but the Valley, as we know it today, is driven by To see Steve Blank’s CHM lecture on our YouTube channel profi t and venture fi nance. What happened? This visit: youtube.com/computerhistory. started out as Microwave Valley. What changed? The Blank is a lecturer at Stanford University’s School money. Fundamentally, funding for startups in the of Engineering and Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Valley shifted from the military to venture capital. He is a serial entrepreneur, having spent nearly 30 Venture capital began simply as a way for rich years as a founder and executive of high-tech companies families to invest. In the early 1940s, j.h. Whitney in Silicon Valley.

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 27 Though it was created by a single individual named Linus Torvalds, Linux has truly become a world- changing software environment. An estimated 64 million people around the world use Linux, accord- ing to the Linux Counter. The Linux Foundation projects the Linux ecosystem will reach $50 billion in the next two years. A self-professed geek, Torvalds hails from a fam- ily of journalists, where he is considered the black sheep. He was named after Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize-winning chemist, and Linus from the Peanuts cartoon. He attributes his “dualistic nature of seri- ous and not-so-serious” to his name. Torvalds was awarded one of the 2008 chm Fellow Awards, for creating the and overseeing open source development of the widely used Linux operating system. Linux got its start as an operating system when Torvalds began playing around with minix, a unix-like operating system—short for Mini- REMARKABLE mal unix. Torvalds had simply posted it to a minix PEOPLE forum to gather a little feedback. And feedback was what Torvalds got—in spades. Users have quickly become fanatical in their following of Linux. In spite of the ingenuity of the original creation, Linux, as we now know it, is founded on a quiet TECHNOLOGY spirit of collaboration. To Torvalds, collaboration came hand-in-hand with passion. How did Linux manage to pick up such a huge fan-base of users all working to continually improve on the product? BY FIONA TANG ROCK STAR Torvalds said, “They always volunteered. I wouldn’t even want to work with people who don’t feel passionately about what they do because searching for people to do something doesn’t work… It started out slow and on a very small scale. But it was a natural progression.” As a result, Linux, with the help of the Internet, has spurred the wide- spread, successful movement of what is now known as Open Source. This August, Linux turned 18. It has grown from 10,000 lines of code to roughly 7 million. And even though Torvalds is one of the few scientists in a family of journalists, he’s now likely to be the most widely published of his family—and have more fans than most rock stars. “The impact that Linus has had on the software industry can’t be overestimated. He sparked the world’s largest technology project in the history of computing. And now, 18 years later, millions of people are contributing to the Linux kernel and the $50 billion ecosystem it supports,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director at The Linux Foundation. This article was based on Linus Torvalds’ contribution to the Computer History Museum’s oral history collection. Explore the oral history collection at: computerhistory.org/ oralhistory.

Linus Torvalds at the Computer History Museum’s

2008 Fellow Awards. IMAGING ELEGANCE SYNCHRONIZED

28 CORE 2009 online collection records for search 69,500+

oral histories recorded since 2002 unique countries represented 300+ in the collection 54 CHM COLLECTION BY THE NUMBERS

linear feet of 5,000archival material

software titles in 8,521 the collection

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 29 EXPLORE THE COLLECTION COLLECTION

Top and Close-up: Project Network Analyzer (1964): This special purpose device uses a project-specifi c inside the unit. The pre-wired switches and lights replaced the external probe of the earlier design.

Bottom: Indicator Circuit (1962): When probing a plugboard set up for a project schedule, these lamps showed how the schedule was affected by changes in task durations.

30 CORE 2009 CPM NETWORK ANALYZER INDICATOR CIRCUIT AND PROJECT NETWORK ANALYZER

BY ALEX BOCHANNEK CHM#: X5248.2009 DATE: 1962, 1964-1966 DONOR: Doris-Jane Fondahl Human civilizations have embarked on large-scale projects for thousands of years. But it wasn’t until the 1950s that the scientifi cally founded discipline of project management emerged. Beginning in 1956, the DuPont chemi- cal company—with Univac—devised the Critical Path Method (cpm) to solve construction scheduling problems. cpm and related methods essentially represent project tasks and their relationships as a network. The extensive calculations necessary for the technique at DuPont were performed by their univac computer. In 1958, the u.s. Navy awarded a con- tract to Stanford University civil engineering professor John Fondahl to investigate the feasibility of performing cpm calculations by hand instead of by expensive electronic computers. He published an infl uential book on the subject in 1961, which was cal analogy of a project schedule. The widely read in the construction industry. Indicator Circuit was used to probe the Realizing that some of the manual plugboard, entries were made into a work- calculations were quite repetitive, Fondahl sheet, and the schedule was then manually constructed a device to aid him in this task recalculated. With the help of Stanford’s in 1962. He wired up an ibm accounting Electronics Lab, Fondahl constructed machine plugboard to create the electri- the more sophisticated Project Network Analyzer in 1964. John Fondahl intended to commercialize his inventions but decided against it when Left: Detail of Indicator lights on smaller, cheaper computers arrived and the Project Network Analyzer. his interests shifted toward more complex Above: John Fondahl’s laboratory resource-scheduling problems. He contin- notebook describing his CPM ued to use the one-of-a-kind devices in his Network Analyzer (1962). The In- dicator Circuit with its test prong home and offi ce, though, and preserved is shown in the drawing. both units until his passing in 2008.

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 31 ELLIS D. KROPOTECHEV AND ZEUS, A MARVELOUS TIME-SHARING DEVICE MOVIE BY HEATHER YAGER

CHM#: 102651555 before departing to meet his girlfriend. portance of the late 1960s transition from DATE: ca.1967 The fi ve hour wait time and error-riddled this so-called “batch” method to timeshar- PRODUCER: Stanford University, output of his program cause Kropotechev ing, an interactive method in which the Department of to lose hope, and he envisions his girlfriend programmer used a video display terminal leaving him. As he lights a cigarette and to directly interact with the computer considers giving up, a nearby computer ter- himself. Other users also shared part of the The fi lm Ellis D. Kropotechev and Zeus minal speaks to him and invites him to try computer’s time, giving each user the ap- features Zeus, a time-sharing system a time-sharing device instead. Using Zeus, pearance that the computer was responding developed by the Department of Computer Kropotechev is able to correct the errors in only to them. Science at Stanford University. Written his program quickly, and the fi lm ends with and acted by programmers and faculty, the a shot of Kropotechev and his girlfriend fi lm mixes physical comedy with a touch walking arm-in-arm into the sunset. of surrealism and a clever soundtrack From the start of the modern computer featuring the Rolling Stones and Wagner’s era in the mid-1950s, programming was a “Ride of the Valkyries,” an engaging look time-consuming process involving punch- at the culture of in ing one’s programs onto cards, submitting the 1960s. The story is a race against time: the cards to a computer operator, then Ellis D. Kropotechev is a computer scientist waiting (sometimes a day or more) for attempting to run and debug a program results. This fi lm captures the technical im-

32 CORE 2009 Title page of Shockley’s book, signed to Harry Sello by the reknowned author.

ELECTRONS AND HOLES IN SEMICONDUCTORS BOOK BY WILLIAM SHOCKLEY BY DAVID LAWS

CHM#: 102704591 DATE: 1950 DONOR: Harry Sello

Harry Sello generously donated his copy of William Shockley’s magnum opus “Electrons and Holes” to the Museum collection for exhibit in the Silicon Engine artifact display. Sello’s copy of the book is unique in that when he was working at Shockley Semiconductor Labs in Mountain View he came up with an improved design for a diffusion furnace. Shockley asked him what he was working on. Impressed with the ap- proach, he asked Harry if he under- stood all the thermal and mechanical considerations involved. As Harry says, “When the boss asks you a question like that what else can you say but ‘Yes.’ Several minutes later Shockley returned with a copy of his book signed on the title page with the message, “To Harry Sello. A man with a big red hot idea. W=Shockley, 26 Mar 58.”

Stills from the movie, Ellis D. Kropotechev and Zeus.

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 33 RECENT ARTIFACT DONATIONS COLLECTION BY DAG SPICER

BOSCH ANTI-LOCK BRAKING SYSTEM (ABS) COMPUTER

CHM#: X5442.2009 DATE: 1978 DONOR: Robert Bosch GmbH The Bosch abs-2 system was introduced in 1978 as an option to the Mercedes-Benz s-class luxury car. It marks the beginning of general availability of fully- electronic abs for passenger cars. By the 1990s, further developments incorporated abs into more complex traction and stability control systems and abs is now commonplace in new automobiles This device marks one of the earliest examples of the use of digital con- trol for real-time automotive applications.

34 IBM SYSTEM 360 SLIDE SET TANDEM “NON-STOP” COMPUTER SYSTEMS

CHM#: X5321.2009 CHM# 102711483 – 102711488 DATE: 1965 DATE: 1983-1997 DONOR: Dan Leeson DONOR: Hewlett-Packard These slides of ibm’s very early products, history and These fi ve machines represent some of Tandem’s “highly- key people were used as part of a lecture series given by available” computer systems. Such systems were popular with ibm’s Education Department to branch offi ces around customers who demanded high reliability and quick performance, the world. They include images of ibm President and ceo such as stock markets, telecom companies, banks and atm Thomas Watson Sr. networks. While conventional systems of the era, including mainframes, had a mean time between failures in the order of a few days, the Non-Stop system was designed with uptimes measured in years. In 1997, Tandem was acquired by , which was then acquired by hp in 2002.

COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM 35 MYSTERY ITEM WHAT’S THIS?

Take your best guess! Previous Core Mystery As these cards were initially The fi rst two Core readers Item Description used to control computers, who submit the correct an- This is a section from a it is ironic that the cards swers by March 1, 2009, will long, interconnected, series shown here were produced receive a free copy of Core of Jacquard loom cards, using a modern computer- Memory: A Visual Survey of used to control the patterns controlled card-making Vintage Computers. Email made by a weaving machine. system made by German your guess to: editor@com- Jacquard cards were the company Grosse. puterhistory.org. Good luck! inspiration for the punched The 2008 winners: Gerald card accounting systems and Steinback and Jason Walding computers used during much of the twentieth century.

36 CORE 2009 SUPPORT ABOUT CHM HOURS The Computer History Museum is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of the computing WED • THU • FRI • SUN: revolution and its worldwide impact on the human experience. It is home to the largest international 12 noon – 4 pm collection of computing artifacts in the world, encompassing computer hardware, software, docu- SATURDAY: mentation, ephemera, photographs and moving images. chm brings computer history to life through 11 am – 5 pm an acclaimed speaker series, dynamic website, onsite tours, as well as physical and online exhibits. TOURS ’s CURRENT EXHIBITS ONLINE EXHIBITS WED • THU • FRI: Difference Engine No. 2 2010 will be an exciting year Eleven online exhibits at 1 pm & 2:30 pm Designed in the 1840s, the of progress toward complet- computerhistory.org/exhibits SATURDAY: Engine is a stunning display ing our major, new exhibition, 12 noon, 1:30 pm & 3:15 pm of Victorian mechanics and an scheduled to launch in the fall. SUNDAY: arresting spectacle of automatic COLLECTION Please “pardon our dust” as Times vary, please call ahead Collection: you visit througout the year. computing. It consists of 8,000 bronze, cast iron and steel More than 100,000 items The Silicon Engine parts, weighs 5 tons, and mea- Catalog Search: BABBAGE ENGINE This new exhibit celebrates the sures 11 ft. long and 7 ft. high. Search 68,000 artifacts online: DEMONSTRATIONS On display until early 2010. computerhistory.org/ 50th anniversary of the inte- WEEKDAYS: collections/search grated circuit (ic) and presents 2 pm Visible Storage Oral Histories: the history and innovations SAT • SUN: Closed to pack and move Search 150 transcribed of the ic. The exhibit details 1 pm & 2 pm the invention of the transistor, the specifi c artifacts into the interviews: computerhistory. its role as a building block of major, new exhibition. org/collections/oralhistories/ YouTube Videos: the integrated circuit, the rapid INFO growth of semiconductors Mastering the Game: View 72 lecture videos: EVENTS: and the profound effect these A History of youtube.com/computerhistory computerhistory.org/events technologies have had on Our History of Chess exhibit GIVING: modern life. examines computing’s fi ve- computerhistory.org/giving decade-long quest to build a ARTIFACT DONATIONS: computer to challenge the best computerhistory.org/ chess players. collections/donateArtifact VOLUNTEERING: Innovation in the Valley computerhistory.org/volunteers Learn about the innovators of computing technology in Silicon Valley who have CONTACT changed the world, including 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd, local giants Apple, Cisco, hp, Mountain View, CA 94043 Intel and Sun. (650) 810-1010 [email protected] computerhistory.org

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