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An Incomplete History of Microcomputing

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An Incomplete History of Microcomputing l - - - - - w ' w ' ww - - - - AN - a- 5 =- - - INCOMPLETE ^ v ^ - - i HISTORY OF - - vv a cars MICROCOMPUTING ^ r v wssw v s F - by Rory Donaldson 3000 B.C. 1820 1890 The abacus is developed in Babylonia. The Arithmometer, the first com- The first automated U.S. census is mercial calculator. tabulated on the Hollerith Tabulating 1400 Machine. Because of the extra reports Moslem astronomers understand the 1831 that this automaton is able to gen- mathematical use of zero. Michael Faraday builds the first electric erate, the census costs nearly twice as generator. much as projected, creating a contro- I SOOs versy about the benefits of automation Geneva becomes the world's center 1837 that continues to this day. for the mother of all machines, Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail develop the clock. a simple way to send a signal to a 1893 distant receiver. Their invention is The Millionaire, the first efficient four- 1600 called the telegraph. function calculator, hits the market. Galileo brings together the exper- iential and mathematical into a single 1854 1900-1910 stream of inquiry that leads to the English mathematician George Boole Mechanical calculators become scientific method. creates Boolean Algebra and lays the commonplace. groundwork for information theory. 1623 1903 The Schickard mechanical calculator. 1855 _ Nikola Tesa patents electrical logic G. E. Scheutz builds the first practical circuits called gao or switches. 1630 mechanical computer. The slide rule. 1924 1862 _ IBM founded. 1652 Charles Babbage's difference and ana- The Pascal calculator relieves lytical engines promise steam-driven 1921 the tedium of adding long columns machines that will mechanize thought. The cathode ray tube (CRT). of numbers. He draws thousands of detailed draw- ings that project the fundamentals on 1 936 1673 which today's computers operate. Alan Turing describes the very Idea of The Leibnitz calculator, the first digital 0 a universal machine, the Turing Machine, machine, can multiply, add, divide, Augusta Ada. Countess of Lovelace. in a paper tited, "On Computable subtract. the first computer software genius, Numbers with an Application to the programs Babbage's engine and un- Entscheidungsproblem." Early IlOOs derstands the power of simulating Hans Christian Oersted discovers that a generalized machine that wil do your - ____ 1937 electricity in motion creates a mag- bidding. The engine is so mechanically Atanasoff formulates the principles of netic field that can be converted to complex that It Is unable to overcome the first electronic digital calculator, mechanical energy. Up to this point, its own friction and never actually Including the use of base-2, binary, on- electricity has had no practical use works, but the concept is in place. off, or "digital" signals. He builds the other than generating heat. world's first working model of the electronic digital computer. In 1973 a · . ___ 1801 _, 1875 U.S. district court recognizes Atanasoff Joseph Marie Jacquard invents the Frank Baldwin opens the first Amer- a the official Inventor of the computer. punch-card-operated loom, creating a ican calculator shop. model for future punch-card-operated computers. 1886 _____ William Burroughs develops the first successful mechanical adding machine. 116 WHOLE EARTH REVIEW SPRING 1987 -2g7 II I II 1938 __ 191 -1963 _ Konrad Zuse finishes his ZI. the first Univac, the first commercially available The first portable electronic calculator binary calculating machine. computer, is constructed by Remington is introduced by the Bell Punch Co. Rand for the U.S. Bureau of Census. 1941 0 The Zuse 3 Isthe first electro- 1964 _____ Grace Hopper conceives of a program The first criminally prosecuted mechanical general-purpose program compu- known as a compiler. ter crime. Texas controlled calculator. Hancock is sentenced to five years for pirating $5 million - 1956 worth of his employer's software. 1943 With the help of Marvin Minsky, John The IBM Mark 1,the first electronic McCarthy, an assistant professor at The digital computer to use mechanical first personal computer (PC), the Dartmouth College. coins the phrase relays. Linc. It costs $40,000, has a personal v *, Artifcial Intelligence (A). filing system, keyboard, interactive The U.S. Army appropriates $61,700 display, and is "transportable." to build ENIAC, the first productive 1958_ IBM estimates that electronic-digital computer (no relays). five large computers Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford are al that will be needed to satisfy all Research Institute develops the first 1945 of the world's data processing require- Mouse. It is pretty much Ignored until While working on the Mark I, Grace ments. IBM passes up the chance to 1983, when Apple's Lisa is introduced. Hopper discovers the first computer purchase a small company that has just bug, crushed in a relay. She goes on developed a process known as Xero- Dartmouth BASIC (Beginner's All- to begin the world's first program- graphy. discounting the technology purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) ming career. as "unimportant." is developed by Kemeny and Kirk in order to give students access to big Vannear Bush describes the first per- " 1959 computers with only a semester sonal computer n an artkle. "As We The IBM RAMAC, the first disk-based or two of study. May Think," in Atlantic Monthly maga- computer of consequence, uses disk zine. What Bush has in mind b a mini- platters four feet in diameter. 1967 ature machine called the memex - Alan Kay and Ed Cheadle develop the memory extender - consisting of a Grace Hopper develops the compiler. FLEX computer with multiple windows desk, screens, keyboards, levers, that and graphics. It proves too difficult would act as a calculator, word pro- 1960 to use and leads Kay to describe the cessor, picture editor, and filer. J.C. R. Licklider formulates the goal Dynabook: a computer for under of interactive computing In his paper $1,000 that would satisfy the most 1946 "Man-Computer Symbiosis." Inter- demanding of computer users: children. Mauchly and Eckert finish ENIAC and active computing implies a continuous Kay realizes that the technology just turn it on on February 13.Budgeted dialog between user and system, as op- isn't there to successfully develop at $61,700 three years earlier. ENIAC posed to batch processing where data his machine. ends up costing $486,804. The machine is accumulated over a period of time was designed to compute the trajectory and then submitted without any inter- 1968 of artillery shels during World War II, vening response from the receiving unit. The Hal computer mutinies in 2001: but the war ends before the system can A Space Odyssey. be put to use. It is then used running Project Multiple Access Computing feasibility studies for the development (MAC) explores Interactive time- 1969 _ of the hydrogen bomb. sharing computing at MIT. Ted Hoff of Intel introduces a new era ENIAC weighs 30 tons and contains in integrated electronics: the 4004 70,000 resistors, 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1961 microprocessor. This is the universal 3,000 neon bulbs, and 500,000 sol- Robert Noyce of Intel and Jack Kirby engine, a general-purpose, program- dered joints. of Texas Instruments solve the most mable combination of all the elements important engineering problem of of a computer on a single chip of silicon. John von Neumann builds the logical their time: how to integrate all the The 4004 is able to address 4K of framework for a generalized program- components of an electronic circuit RAM and perform 60,000 instructions mable machine: a central processor, a onto a single flake of silicon. An In- a second. memory, an arithmetic unit, Input/ tegrated circuit (IC)replaces thousands output devices, operating In a step- of transistors with a single silicon chip. Kenneth Thompson of Bell Labs writes by-step manner. ICs go on the market for $120 each. the first version of UNIX for the DEC PDP-7 minicomputer, unleashing the The EDVAC computer Is able to The IBM 360, the first programmable essence of communal computing: switch between different programs. computer. remote access and time sharing. 19,47 _ -------- 1962 _ 1970 _ Bell Labs invents the transistor, allow- Spacewar, the first interactive com- Stanford develops the Mycin inference ing huge amounts of information to be puter game, is written by Steve Russell engine, the first expert system, dedi- handled by very small, inexpensive, while a student at MIT. cated to diagnosing blood infections. cool devices that replace thousands continued of vacuum tubes. Sketchpad, the first interactive graphics program, is designed by Ivan Sutherland. 1950 Alan Turing proposes the classic test of machine ntelligence In a paper titled Computer Machinery and Intelligence: "A machine may be deemed Intelligent when it can pass for a human being in a blind test." gff 27 GATEFIVE ROAD SAUSALITO CA 94965 117 - I 1971 - 1975 1981 Journalist Don Honler refers to a The January Popular Electronics has Kenji Urada 37, is run over by a robot 100-square-mile valley southeast of San as Its cover story the eight-bit Altair he's working on and becomes the first Francisco as "Silicon Valley" because micro kit using the Intel 8080 - thou- robot fatality. of all the high-tech industry. So long sands of micro hobbyists receive the plums, prunes, pears. subliminal signal that the era of per- Adam Osborne releases the Osborne I sonal computing has finally arrived. computer: a 24-pound, luggable com- Eectronic News publishes the first ad At last there is a machine powerful plete system bundled with 64K RAM, for a microchip, the 4004. For the enough to write software for. monitor and keyboard, two disk drives, first time the public is let in. a serial and parallel port, WordStar, The Homebrew Computer Club (the MailMerge, SuperCalc, CP/M and BA- The Kenbak-l PC, the first commer- first micro user's group) is founded in SIC - all for the unprecedented price cially available PC.
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