Team 3A

1961 to 1970

Professor Charles Bauer

CS 485: Computers & Society

24 January 2016

History of Computers ­ 1961 to 1970

Significant developments of the period between 1961 and 1970 included both hardware and software. Important people like Gordon Moore, Ralph Baer and others played an important role in these developments, and these developments impacted society in more than one way.

Hardware Development

From factory robots to multitasking to the internet, this decade saw the rise of many innovations that were precursors to technologies today. As factories become more and more automated, we trace its roots back to 1961, where the first industrial robot “joined the assembly line at General Motors” (Robot). Named Unimate, this robot “took die castings from machines and performed welding on auto bodies”, tasks which were unpleasant for humans (Robot).

Unimate had “six fully programmable axes of motion” and could handle weight of “up to 500 lbs” (Robot). Its “dedicated electronic control” set the stage to teach and operate future industrial robots (Robot).

In 1964, the Dartmouth Time­Sharing System (DTSS) was born. This system was ​ comprised of two computers: the “General Electric Datanet­30, which is used both as the remote console controller” and as the site for the “master executive program. It can control, through interrupts, the other computer, a General Electric GE­235 , whose main functions is to compile

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programs and to perform floating­point arithmetic” (Dartmouth). The DTSS serves as a precursor to a technology that all computers use today: multitasking.

Although it has become an object of antiquity, the floppy disk was the first portable hardware that was an inexpensive and reliable way to “load instructions and install software updates into mainframe computers” (IBM). The floppy disk was invented in 1967. It replaced the

“paper punched cards for data entry and software programming” (IBM). In the same year, a machine that “paved the way for video games,” the Brown Box, was developed by Ralph Baer

(National). Dubbed the Father of the Video Game, Baer “developed a prototype for the first multiplayer, multi­program video game system” (National). Despite being only a prototype, the

Brown Box “had basic features” of “two controls and a multigame program system” (National).

In the following year, Alan Kay introduced the first personal computer to the world, a programmable calculator, the Hewlett­Packard 9100­A. It was the “first, totally self­contained programmable unit” and “included a display with three registers and a magnetic card reader” with “an optional printer” (History). The Hewlett­Packard 9100A used a PC board ROM for its algorithms, including logarithmic and trigonometric functions.

Initially developed to enable communication in the aftermath of a nuclear war, a distributed communications network that formed the foundation of the World Wide Web was introduced on a large scale in 1969 (Rand). This distributed communications network would have “no centralized switches and could operate even if many of its links and switching nodes had been destroyed” (Rand). The network would comprise of a series of “unmanned nodes that would act as switches, routing information from one node to another to their final destinations”

(Rand). The first node in a large­scale test was installed at UCLA in 1969. Although it was

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intended for scientists and researchers to share their computers remotely, the network quickly turned into a “high­speed, electronic post office for exchanging everything from technical to personal information” (Rand).

Software Development

This decade also saw significant progress in the area of software development. In 1961,

Spacewar!, the first video game to be played on a minicomputer was introduced. Spacewar!

“required over 100,000 calculations per second,” and it required the computer’s CPU to “send over 20,000 points per second to the display while running the game” (PDP).

ASCII, which stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, was developed in 1963. It set a standard, unified language for different computers to communicate with each other. Before ASCII, “each manufacturer had its own way of representing letters in the alphabet, numbers and control codes,” leading to “over 60 different ways to represent characters in computers” (Brandel). ASCII is now used in most operating systems except “Windows NT, which uses the new Unicode standard, which is only somewhat compatible with ASCII”

(Brandel).

On May 1, 1964, BASIC (Beginner’s All­Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) successfully ran programs on a General Electric computer. BASIC was developed by two professors in Dartmouth College in hopes of increasing computer literacy (McCracken). It was designed to be “as approachable as possible” (McCracken). BASIC, together with DTSS, changed the way we interact with computers. What used to be a series of punching cards, handing the cards over to a operator and waiting for results transformed to a simple process of

“typing words and math statements,” and obtaining the results right away (McCracken).

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Important People

Aside from Ralph Baer who developed the first video game system prototype, Alan Lay who introduced the first personal computer, Paul Baran who brought us pocket switches and unmanned nodes in a distributed communications network, Bob Bemer who proposed ASCII, and John E. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz who designed BASIC, Gordon Moore, Doug

Engelbart, and Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie also made notable contributions during this time period.

In 1965, Gordon Moore wrote a paper, “The Future of Integrated Electronics” that became known as “Moore’s Law.” In his paper, he predicted the trend of the development of integrated electronics to the year 1975” claiming that “the future rate of increase in complexity” would double every year, which was later revised to every two years (Silicon). “This prediction became a self­fulfilling prophecy that emerged as one of the driving principles of the semiconductor industry” (Silicon). Moore’s Law is still valid today with the exponential growth of data, and technologists attempt to adhere to this law to “future­proof” their products.

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart gave a demonstration of the online system,

NLS at the Fall Joint Computer Conference (Demo). The computer mouse, hypertext, object addressing, dynamic file linking and shared screen collaborated at different sites were also items that made their debut that day.

Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie created the UNIX operating system in 1969. They designed it to run on new, smaller minicomputers. Dennis Ritchie later rewrote UNIX in C. As a result, “UNIX became a truly portable operating system capable of running on many different hardware platforms” (Hall).

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Impact on Society

Many of the technologies developed in the decade from 1961 to 1970 made noteworthy impacts on society. Without Unimate, the industrial robot, humans had to perform unpleasant tasks that posed significant health risks. The Brown Box introduced video games to the world.

The Hewlett­Packard 9100A made people realize that a computer can be sitting on a desk, not housed in a big room with loud, spinning machines.

ASCII made many technologies possible as it opened the gateway for computers to communicate with each other on one common language. The fact that computers were able to communicate with each other allowed for developers to be more creative and expanded their innovations to beyond the computer in front of them. Without ASCII and the distributed communications network at Rand, the World Wide Web would not be possible.

BASIC, along with DTSS, granted access to more people and helped increased computer literacy at a time when computers were “a pricey shared resource, normally capable of performing only one task at a time” (McCracken). The DTSS allowed for users at terminals to compose and run programs without waiting for their punch cards to be processed, and BASIC eliminated the need for punch cards and long wait times. BASIC was also easier to comprehend compared to the prevailing language, Fortran, at that time.

Moore’s Law became a rule that developers follow to ensure that their developments cater for exponential growth. The computer mouse, hypertext, object addressing, dynamic file linking, shared screen collaborations, Unix and C are still widely used today.

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Works Cited

Brandel, Mary. “1963: The debut of ASCII.” CNN.com. 6 July 1999. Web. 18 January 2016. ​ ​ Dartmouth Time­Sharing System. “The Dartmouth Time­Sharing System: A Brief Description.” ​ Web. 17 January 2016.

The Demo. University of Stanford. Web. 18 January 2016.

Hall of Fellows. Computer History Museum. Web. 18 January 2016. ​ ​ History of Computers. Hewlett­Packard 9100A. Web. 17 January 2016. ​ IBM 100. Icons of Progress. Web. 17 January 2016. ​ McCracken, Henry. “Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language that Made Computers

Personal.” Time.com. 29 April 2014. Web. 17 January 2016.

The National Museum of American History. The Brown Box, 1967 ­ 1968. Web. 17 January ​ 2016.

“PDP­1 Restoration Project, Spacewar!” Computer History Museum. Web. 18 January 2016. ​ ​ Rand. Paul Baran and the Origin of the Internet. Web. 17 January 2016. ​ Robot Hall of Fame. 2003 Inductee for Robot Hall of Fame. Web. 17 January 2016. ​ “The Silicon Engine: A Timeline of Semiconductors in Computers.” Computer History Museum. ​ Web. 18 January 2016.