LECTURE L12THE RISE OF THE MACHINE

“I can assure you on the highest authority that the data processing is a fad and won’t last out the year.”

Editor-in-charge of business books, Prentice-Hall 1957

Q1

Define the term computer

dictionary.com

69 years ago

“I  think  there  is  a  world  market  for  maybe  five  computers.”  

-­‐  Thomas  Watson,  chairman  of  IBM,  1943  

38 years ago

“There  is  no  reason  for  any  individual  to  have  a  computer  in  their  home.”  

-­‐  Kenneth  Olsen,  president  and  founder  of  Digital  Equipment  Corp.,  1977  

Think about this How many computers do you have in your household?

Q2What were the two main reasons to build calculating machines?

HistoryComputing is time consuming and error prone

Demands for computation were increasing with more organised societies

Industrial revolution and the Napoleonic reforms

Impetus came from Government: Taxing and Defence

Efforts to speed calculations started early

Use of logarithmic tables and trigonometry to speed calculations

The Counting Business

The Slide Rule by William Oughtred in 1625

Built using logarithms, multiplication of two numbers could be done easier a*b = 10^(log(a)+log(b))

Much quicker than manual calculation

The Counting Business

Early Machines

Wilhelm Schickard (1592 -1635)

German professor of Hebrew and Astronomy University of Tüblingen, Germany

Built a calculating machine in 1620s

Documented in letters to Johannes Kepler 1623 and 24

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher

Built an adding machine in1642-44

Tried to commercialise the machine but labor was too cheap

Early Machines

Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)

German mathematician and philosopher

Built a machine, the Leibniz Wheel that could multiply and divide

Early Machines

Q3

Why did early machines not get widespread?

History

Workmanship for building complex machines lacked

In late eighteenth century demand for calculation was growing

Calculations were done by hand

Tedious, slow and error-prone and tables of logarithms were riddled with errors

Think about this How long does it take to compute 707 decimal places of PI?

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360011330530548820466521384146951941511609433057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548074462379962749567351885752724891227938183011949129833673362440656643086021394946395224737190702179860943702770539217176293176752384674818467669405132000568127145263560827785771342757789609173637178721468440901224953430146549585371050792279689258923

Think about this The idea of calculating with steam was to many impossible - machines could never take over this human activity

Yet it did. Can you think of a task done today that will be taken over by machine in the future?

Charles Babbage(1791 – 1871)

Sometimes called Inventor of the Computer

Wanted to remove the inevitablehuman errors from computing

Believed that machines could replace laborious and error-prone calculations

Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871)

Designed the Difference Engine

Machine to compute polynomials

Got grants but efforts were slow

Lack of workmanship of the time delayed the project

Worked stopped 1833

Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871)

Babbage started on a new machine in 1834Beginning of the 2nd Kondratiev – Steam

Analytical engine

Programmable machine – with primitive programming languageInput was in punched cardsRun by steam

Augusta Ada King (1815-1852) Countess of Lovelace

A Programmable Machine - General purpose computer

Contained mill to calculate, store to keep data, and formulas

The first programmer

Q4

What was the first killer application for calculating machines?

The Cash Register

The Cash RegisterOne of the first calculating machines

Developed by James Ritty in 1879 in response to thefts by staff

“The Incorruptible Cashier”

National Cash Register Company – NCR

One of the salesman was Tomas Watson, Sr.

Watson would later leave for CRT – Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company

Tabulating Machines

Tabulating Machines

In the US need for data processing was growingOne application was census taking

US population grew from 17 million in 1840 to 50 million in 1880It took 1.495 clerks 7 years to produce the 1880 census

Tabulating Machines

Source:  Tabulating  machineHerman  Hollerith  

Tabulating Machine Company – TMC

US Census Bureau awarded Herman Hollerith a contract to produce the 1890 census

Tabulating Machines with punched cards

Successfully finished in 2,5 yearswith one-third less cost (claimed)

Tabulating Machines

Source:  Tabulating  machineHerman  Hollerith  

Used punched cardsHollerith cards were in use until 1960s

Tabulating MachinesThe Business of Data Processing

Even with the growing need for data processing around 1900, the market for tabulating machines was limited

CRT and TMC merged and would later change the name to International Business Machines – IBM

“I think there is a market for about five computers” - Tomas Watson, Sr.

Electronic Brains

Electric Computing

Foundation of electric computing was laid early

Mechanical computers were not considered practical

Electricity is widespread

Threat of war is looming in the 1930sGovernments turn to computing for ballistic computations and code-breaking

Although electricity had entered the equation, it had done so only as an alternative method of powering mechanical equipment

Source:  Engines  that  Move  Markets

The Prevailing Technology Trap

Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) German Engineer Built primitive machines, Z1-Z4 based on relay switches in 1936 – 1944

Used binary system Designed his own language, Plankalkül

Never received any official support from war-time Germany unlike the Allies

Early Work

P2 max (V0[:8.0],V1[:8.0]) => R0[:8.0] V0[:8.0] => Z1[:8.0] (Z1[:8.0] < V1[:8.0]) -> V1[:8.0] => Z1[:8.0] Z1[:8.0] => R0[:8.0] END

Source:  Konrad  Zuse

Bletchley Park

Location of top-secret code-breaking team Code-breaking the German coding machine ENIGMA

Alan Turing

Source:  Alan  Turing,  COLOSSUS,  Enigma

English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer

Headed the team at Bletchley Park Worked on the algorithms to break the ENIGMA code

Bombe Computer based on heuristics

Lead to COLOSSUS – one of the firstelectronic computer

Publishes paper in 1936: On Computable Numbers

War Machines

Source:  COLOSSUS

COLOSSUS

Built in England’s Bletchley Park and used by British code breakers to read encrypted German ENIGMA messages during World War II

Designed by Alan Turing

Winston Churchill specifically ordered the destruction of most of the Colossus machines into 'pieces no bigger than a man's hand‘

Q5Why were machines built during World war II?

War Machines

Source:  EINIAC

ENIAC

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer

Built by the U.S. Army for the purpose of calculating ballistic firing tables Used 18.000 vacuum tubes

Designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert

The machine was unveiled in 1946 and was in operation until 1955

John von Neumann

John  von  Neumann,  Von  Neumann  architecture

Hungarian mathematician

Worked on the Manhattan project and became involved in Moore’s School ENIAC and EDVAC projects

Publishes paper - or a memo, On computer design, 1945

Came to be know as Von Neumann architecture

Copyright  ©  2011  Ólafur  Andri  Ragnarsson

Post-war computers

Based on vacuum tubes

UNIVAC I

Source:  Model  of  UNIVAC  I,  c.  1954. Picture  from  Smithsonian  Institution  

Source:  UNIVAC  I  

Commercial Computer

5,200 vacuum tubes, weighed 13 tons, consumed 125 kW, and could perform about 1,905 operations per second running on a 2.25 MHz clock

Occupied more than 35.5 m²of floor space

The addition time was 525 microseconds

Transistor Era

Transistor was invented by William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain in 1948

Transistor

Device use to amplify or switch electronic signals

Huge performance improvement Smaller Less energy More robust Faster

Copyright  ©  2011  Ólafur  Andri  Ragnarsson

Computers becamefaster, larger and more powerful

Tyranny of Numbers

Source:  Tyranny  of  Numbers,  Transistor  Computer  

Computer Engineers have much more flexibility with transistors

Problem was that as the number of components increased, wiring them together became a problem

Q6What solved the Tyranny of Numbers problem?

The Integrated circuit

Copyright  ©  2011  Ólafur  Andri  Ragnarsson

The Invention of the Integrated Circuit

Source:  Integrated  circuit  

Introduced in 1958 by two inventors

Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor and Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments

Transistors could be wired together in practical way

Mass manufacturing of ICs

Adjacent possible

Two inventors at the same time invented the IC

Competition EmergesThe Computer Market is born

The main application is data processing• Business applications like Payroll, inventory and so on

IBM enters the computer businessTomas Watson, Jr. launchedIBM System/360 in 1964

Systematically replaced data processing machineswith mainframe computers

In the 1950s Automation Starts

Automation

Automation – Computers begin to disrupt

Start to replace jobs

Banks and insurance companies were early adopters

Handling paycheques, payroll that used to require many clerks to compute

Automation

Source:  Desk  Set  (from  IMDB)

Hollywood took notice

Desk Set from 1957 with Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn

From Mainframes to Personal Computers

Think About This!

Resources, Processes and Values TheoryThe Disruptive Innovation Theory

Computers in the 1970s

Mainframes

IBM  704

IBM  System/360

Large computers in data centres

Batch operationsCritical applicationsFinancial transaction processing

Q7Mainframes were expensive. Not many people could use them. How was this solved?

Centralisation

Time-sharingComputers were expensive to purchase and maintain

To make it efficient required multiple usersLarge data centres

Utility Computing

Time-sharing of expensive equipment

Moore’s Law

Cost of computers went down

MinicomputersCost for new entrants in the computer business was prohibitive in the 60s

Market for those that did not need complete solution but could benefit from using computes

Birth of the Minicomputers

Two major client groups: academic community and the military

MinicomputersDigital Equipment Corporation

Founded in 1957 by Ken Olsen Launched PDP-1 in 1960

The PDP-8 was the first successful commercial minicomputer – 1965

Used integrated circuits

Time-sharing allowed multiple users to use the machines at the same time

The Disruptive Innovation Theory

Digital used relatively simple, convenient, low-cost innovation to create growth and disrupt IBM

Q8Why did IBM not go into the mini computer market?

RPV

IBM Was a mainframe company, their customers wanted mainframes, not low-performance mini computers

Q9The early computers were all about building the right hardware – this ignored what important element?

SOFTWARE