A HIStOrY

IN COmPUtINg

• Slide 1: use a series of images of some of the first computers used in the US

Punch Card And Ticker-tape

Reader

5-1/4” Dual Floppy

Disk Drive

• Slide 2: fading in from slide one, displaying computers examples into the modern era

This is what I refer to a refrigerator computer

• Slide 3: The Big Idea: The computer started in a basic form of a huge cabinet equaling the size of refrigerators.

Server walls like this one, have been in

existence Since the early

1980’s

• Slide 4: I feel that my younger audience could use some history to grasp and appreciate what we all have to work with, the differences in the past 40 years is quite transverse.

Here we see a cassette drive and a floppy disk drive

These were made by Atari, of course.

My story from H.S., was about the same time in the early 1980’s

• Slide 5: I have seen some pretty interesting concepts in computing, my audience should be comfortable with having the curtain pulled back for the wizard to be seen. I think this can be about five minutes of enlightenment !!I remember back in HS, I was a Junior, and my friend was writing a game on an HP computer that used a printer as a monitor or CRT as we called them back then. The difference with the CRT and modern displays is quite a difference. They went from an olive drab like screen with light green characters, to the beautifully mastered HD Retina displays we have today.

• Slide 6: Call to Adventure Showing some obvious differences of the computers, showing a few that may not be known by the audience.

Some of the older styles of data storage

• Slide 7: What we started with and where we are, and finally where we can go with computing.

• Large cabinets and memory devices that are so different than today.

• The speeds and different types of memory, 5-¼” floppy disks, 3-¼” floppy disks, but these had a hadd case to them.

• The current memory speeds are attributed to smaller processors and compression that was unheard of in the older times.

• The older manufacturing of motherboards and now we are calling them logic boards and video cards.

The heroes of modern

computing

• Slide 8: What was used in the beginning falls short to comparison with what we call computing today, If we are to hit the ground running with the tech we have today, maybe we should take a few steps back and make sure we ar appointing in the best direction. Have you heard that sometimes we have to take two steps back, to move forward? Just so you know, it is true, and the need occurs more often than not.

This is where we came from

• Slide 9: Today there are laptops, notebooks, and tablets that are inconceivably small and fast. Dont get me wrong here, I am not saying we should all burry our heads in the sand and not except change.

• I am trying to encourage you, the the Digital Natives, that it was not always like this, an knowing something about the way it was, will, I hope give you a greater sense of understanding and appreciation.

• Appreciation, is something I feel is being lost in this heightened state of technology.

And this is where are

• Slide 10: The technology today has presented an unprecedented number of different styles of communication, this breaches the basic realm of computing by folding the telephone and the computer, into one sleek very efficient unit. I am not trying to tell my age here,….but to see the vast changes that I have seen, well the thought goes through my mind, is one that tells me I should be asking how is this possible.

Steve Jobs

Bill Gates

• Slide 11: As we look to the past of large and slow,

• I can explain about the differences of size and speeds

• the biggest single drive in a server for the telephone company was 50 MB, and the drive enclosure itself was about the size of a commercial clothes washer.

We have so many different ranges for data

storage

• Slide 12: Currently we have terra flops for server storage, and the enclosure is not much bigger that an average sized volume from an encyclopedia set.

Old school storage servers

• Slide 13: Speaking of encyclopedias, we have the powerful internet and online training this day and age, in the 70’s & 80’s, we had the libraries and leg work and the book work. We would have to leg it out to the libraries and do the work, and then leg it back home, only to just drag it all back to school.

The Old

The New

• Slide 14: Finishing up with from start to finish our goals and views of how we can transcend our digital awareness,

• from being very ignorant in functionality and compare it to the streamline and intelligent experiences we enjoy today.

Faster servers that take up less

space

• Slide 15: To take what we have for granted is not helping us learn, Now I don't expect any of you to feel like you owe something, I am just trying and prying your minds, on how much this industry has changed.

From the mainstream

start, to the future

• Slide 16: To appreciate and understand that things were not as easy as things are today, to have faith in going “old school” every once in a while, is a healthy thing.

• Going back to the basics, can help that level of appreciation that all Digital Citizens should obtain.

From floppy to hard disk, and then into the clouds

• Slide 17: Call to Action (pages 42-43)

• So I challenge each of you to develop your own style, a way to make your mark on society, and sometimes it takes us there by going back to the beginning or somewhere in between, somewhere it sparks a fire in you, to lead you and direct you on your digital journey

• 2

Large cabinet computers to the most advanced desktop computing we have seen yet

• Slide 18: Summarize the main points

I have to admit, I like it in the clouds

• Slide 19:

• “Beggars can’t be choosers”, from the 80’s. In my Junior year of High School, I remember working with a friend his name is Richard, he was programming a game called “Air Assault”. The game was a first person based game, flying dog fight missions in aerial combat, the trick for this process was using an Hewlett Packard computer, but it did not have a CRT, it had a dot matrix printout for the activity display, we wasted so much paper it stifling. To say the least without a proper display, the user interface was very difficult to maintain a sense of the game.

• For you younger users in the digital world, I feel that by knowing where this all started from may help you grasp and appreciate the high strung technology you have today. As we transform out computing skills from 1mb memory cards to portable drives that hold terabytes of data.

• The computer started in a basic form of a huge cabinet equaling the size of 3-4 refrigerators. The functions were activated using programs that were deciphered from punch cards, these card were used to track time for line workers and miners. To somewhere in the early 1980’s, they had been developed into much ambler cabinets that could be set on a shelf or desk, using printers and CRT monitors for the user interface. The dream thus far has surpassed what I feel is become beyond any reasoning from the first developments of computers. !

An icon in computing, who still has us surprised at what

can be done.

• Slide 20: So recreating some of my experiences and sharing them with you, I hope this was interesting and more that tolerable for you. Time is short, and a fancy show of glitter and sparkles, sometimes just that, a big show.

• Being the Digital Immigrant that I am, and all of these experiences coming from someone who had not purchased his first computer until the late 90’s. Thats right, I bought a compaq desktop in the late 90’s, and a co-worker of mine had two sons, one was 10 and the other was 13. I opened up the computer at home, put it all together(the annoying color coded connectors) and used it for about a week. I heard my friend telling me he was trying to figure out how he can get his kids a computer for their school work and so they might experience some good things in life. So I packed it all back into the boxes and delivered to his sons, and told them that they had to keep their grades to Bs and above.

• And you know, they both graduated from HS with As and Bs.