1ba6 computers & society - selected history 1 bt selected history a very selected history of...

1BA6 Computers & Society - Selected History

1BT

Selected History

A VERY SELECTED HISTORY OF COMPUTING

Manchester Mark Iwww.man.ac.uk/Science_Engineering/CHSTM/nahc.htm


2BT

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

– The Social Impact Of Computers. R. Rosenberg. Academic Press. (S-LEN 500.4 N22)

– The Dream Machine - exploring the computer age. J. Plafreman & D. Swade. BBC Books 1991. S-LEN 500.4 N11.

– Before the Altair: The History of Personal Computing.L. Press. Communications of the ACM, Sept 1993, Vol 36, No. 9, pp27-33.

– Accidental Empires. R. Cringely. Penguin, London 1993. S-LEN 608 N21.– The Emperor’s New Mind. R. Penrose. Oxford University Press, 1989. S-LEN

500.15 M997

– The History of Computing Web Site at Virginia Tech. http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/

– In particular – http://video.dlib.vt.edu/cgi-bin/Lobby?Method=Timeline– The IEEE History of Computing Site

http://www.computer.org/history/


3BT

Predictions

Some Predictions– “We have a computer here at Cambridge; there is one in

Manchester and there ought to be one in Scotland as well but that is about all.”

» Douglas Hartree 1947 quoted in The Dream Machine p 8.

– "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

» Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

– "640K ought to be enough for anybody."

» Bill Gates, 1981

– It was predicted in 1963 that within five years human language translators would be redundant!

» c.f. The Dream Machine p 149.


4BT

Pre-computing

Pre-computing– The Abacus - B.C.

1600-

– Schickard gave drawings for a calculating machine to Keepler in 1623. (Nothing came of it.)

– Pascal. The Slide Rule - 1620. Patented a calculating device in 1642.

– Leibniz. Invented a wheel used for efficient multiplication and division (1694).

– Jacquard (1752-1834). Punched cards for controlling the operation of looms.


5BT

Attitudes

ATTITUDES

– “..it is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour or calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.”

» Leibniz c.f. Rosenberg p53.

– "I wish to God these calculations (for log tables) had been executed by steam".

» Babbage. c.f. The Dream Machine page 16.


6BT

Babbage

Charles Babbage 1792-1871

– The Difference Engine 1823-1842A design (and partial implementation) of a machine to automatically calculate polynomials (i.e. a single task machine).

– The Analytic Engine 1832-1871.A design for a machines to solve ANY algebraic equation.


7BT

The Analytic Engine

The Analytic Engine

– Its operation was variable and controlled by the sequence or punched cards. Terminology for componentsstore (memory), mill (arithmetic unit (alu))punched cards for input output, conditional branching.

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

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


8BT

Influence

Influence

– NOTE : Babbage was not an influential figure in the development of computers.


9BT

Punched Card

Punched Cards

– The 1890 US census published in the year it was taken.

– Used punched cards (56 million) to store the data and tabulating machines to manipulate them.

– This technology was the main form of commercial information processing for the 1st half of this century.

– Both IBM and ICL had their origins in punched card companies.


10BT

Turing

Alan Turing (1912-1954)

– Turing's Machine: (1936) By way of a solution to a mathematical problem on computability he designed a hypothetical machine to carry out any algorithm.

– Modern computers are electronic implementations of Universal Turing Machines.

» See chapter 2 of [Penrose 89] for a good description.

» See http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html


11BT

ASIDE

ASIDE

Turing's Test

A machine can be said to think if a human engaged in a dialogue with it and a human cannot distinguish, based up the answers alone, which is the human and which is the machine!

See

http://cogsci.ucsd.edu/~asaygin/tt/ttest.html

http://www.20q.com/


12BT

36-46

1936-1946

(Some of)

The First Electronic Machines


13BT

Not USA

Germany:

– Zuse - Z1, Z2 and Z3 1936-44.

– Programmable calculators. Suggested using valves.

– Work not widely publicised outside of Germany at the time.

UK:

– Colossus: 1943. A single task machine. Code breaking. Used over 1000 valves.


14BT

USA

USA– J V Atanasoff: 1939 prototype binary arithmetic electronic digital

computer.

– ENIAC: 1943-46 Mauchly and Eckert. Moore School of Electrical Engineering University of Pennsylvania.

» Designed to calculate artillery firing tables. 5000 +, 350 *, 38 / operations per second. 20 hours continuous operation. 18k valves, 70k resistors, 10k capacitors. Re-program => re-wire!

– EDVAC (1945): John von Neumann (1903-1957)Suggested that programs could also be stored and manipulated by the machine.

– The von Neumann architecture. Memory, ALU, Control and I/O.


15BT

Wilkes

Maurice Wilkes: Cambridge University

EDSAC 49-58

– The first (working) stored program machine. Used mercury tubes for memory.

– Programmed using text mnemonics which another EDSAC program converted into machine code.


16BT

Commercialisation

COMMERCIALISATION

1946-– 1946 Eckert and Mauchly leave

academia to set up the Electronic Control Company (ECC).

– US Census department sign up to buy an ECC machine that has yet to be built.

– Lyons (the London tea house people) start to build their own EDVAC type machine.First model produced in ~1952. Calculated tax, payrolls and tea mixes.

– Remington Rand: Buy out the almost bankrupt Ecket-Mauchly in 1950.


17BT

Awesome Machine

The Awesome Thinking Machine– In 1952 CBS use a UNIVAC to forecast the results of the

presidential election.» Opinion polls rated the result as too close to call.

– With 8% of the votes counted the UNIVAC S/W correctly predicted that Eisenhower would beat Stevenson with 43 states to 5.

» Walter Cronkite stated “It is awfully early but I will go out on a limb….”

– Newspaper headlines the following day spoke of the Awesome Thinking Machine.


18BT

Semiconductors

Semiconductor Technology

– TRANSISTORS. Invented by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain in 1948.

– First transistor based machine from Bell Labs in 1954.

– Shockley goes to California to make transistors (1955).

– Noyce et al leave Shockley and set up Fairchild (1958)

– Moore's Law (1965) In integrated circuit technology the number of components per unit surface area will double each year.


19BT

Maturity/# units produced

Unit Cost

Cost Curve

The Technology Cost Curve


20BT

Politics

POLITICS & THE COST CURVE

– Missiles being developed in the arms race needed light computers for guidance.

– 1961 JFK starts the race to the moon. Again generating a need for light computers.


21BT

Applications

Early Major Application Areas

– Banking: cheque processing.

– Airlines: ticket reservation.


22BT

IBM

IBM– See their data processing machine business under threat

from UNIVAC.

– Produce a Defence Calculator (701) for the U.S. D.O.D. in 1953 (Korean war) and a business version 650) in 1954.

– 650 used punch cards rather than magnetic tape as they fit more comfortably into existing data processing set-ups.


23BT

360

The 360 Mainframe

– 1964 IBM spend $5 billion on developing the 360 hardware and software.

– Successfully marketed as THE single machine to meet all needs.

– Sets the computing agenda until the microprocessor revolution.


24BT

ASIDE

Locations

– California - sunshine, Stanford university and other companies.

– The Boston ring road - MIT and DIGITAL.

– Cambridge (UK) - Maurice Wilkes et al in Cambridge University.

» MicroSoft European Research Institute.

– Ireland (cheap), educated, English speaking labour, access to the EU.

» Critical mass of expertise.

1ba6 computers & society - selected history 1 bt selected history a very selected history of...

Documents

bt selected history

history of personal

history of computing

bt predictions

slide rule

bt precomputing

bt bibliography

bt influenc