History Of Computers

To most computers are a relatively new occurance but they have

been around for over 60 yrs. ENIAC was the first, short for

Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer,

was the first purely electronic, Turing-complete, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems, although earlier computers had been built with some of these properties. ENIAC was designed and built to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army's

Ballistic Research Laboratory.

The contract was signed on June 5, 1943 and Project PX was

constructed by the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of

Electrical Engineering from July, 1943. It was unveiled on

February 14, 1946 at Penn, having cost almost $500,000.

ENIAC was shut down on November 9, 1946 for a refurbishment

and a memory upgrade, and was transferred to Aberdeen Proving

Ground, Maryland in 1947. There, on July 29 of that year, it was

turned on and would be in continuous operation until 11:45 p.m.

on October 2, 1955.

The tubes being used were similar to light bulbs and were prone to burnout.

Some electronics experts predicted that tube failures would occur

so frequently that the machine would never be useful. This

prediction turned out to be partially correct: several tubes burned

out almost every day, leaving it nonfunctional about half the time.

Special high-reliability tubes were not available until 1948. Most of

these failures, however, occurred during the warm-up and

cool-down periods, when the tube heaters and cathodes were

under the most thermal stress. By the simple (if expensive)

expedient of never turning the machine off, the engineers

reduced ENIAC's tube failures to the more acceptable rate of

one tube every two days.

In 1954, the longest continuous period of operation without a

failure was 116 hours (close to five days).

Also during this time a few brownouts took place due to the massive power drain.

Programmability

The six women who did most of the programming of ENIAC by

manipulating its switches and cables were inducted in 1997 into

the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame . As they

were called by each other in 1946, they were Kay McNulty,

Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas

and Ruth Lichterman.

An Awkward System.

At the beginning of the 1960s, computers were expensive and difficult to operate. Because of the expense, most computers served up information to multiple clients or users from a central location. Information was input on machines capable only of punching holes in cards. The computer processed the information recorded on the cards and ran programs written by highly trained programmers. Reports were generated and returned in the form of hard copy to whomever requested them. It was an awkward system.

An early storage medium made of thin cardboard stock that holds data as patterns of punched holes.

Each of the 80 columns holds one character. The holes are punched by a keypunch machine or card punch peripheral and are fed into the computer by a card reader.

1962 - 1968 -

Packet-switching (PS) networks developed.

The Internet relies on packets to transfer data. The origin is military 

Data is split into tiny packets that may take different routes to a 

destination. Networks can withstand large scale destruction 

(Nuclear attack - This was the time of the Cold War).

Under the leadership of the Department of Defense Advance

Research Project Agency(ARPA), the idea grows from paper

into a small network known as (ARPRANET).

Two major projects in the United States at this time were the 

"Space Program" and a little known or understood one regarding

connecting computers over phone lines. 

This "networking" computers involved something called

"packet switching".  IBM said it would not work and AT&T wanted

nothing to do with  this project.

As the space project took off, within two weeks on Labor Day

(ARPRANET) successfully transmitted their first communication

over a phone line.

1970-73 -

(ARPRANET) is a success. E-Mail quickly becomes the most

popular application.

It was about this time the first pc's were arriving on the scene with

the promise that one day there would be one in every home. They were

quite primitive by today's standards but the race had begun.

The first computer hackers emerge at MIT. They borrow their name from a term to describe members of a model train group at the school who "hack" the electric trains, tracks, and switches to make them perform faster and differently. A few of the members transfer their curiosity and rigging skills to the new mainframe computing systems being studied and developed on campus.

1970s: Phone Phreaks and Cap'n Crunch

Phone hackers (phreaks) break into regional and international phone networks to make free calls. One phreak, John Draper (aka "Cap'n Crunch"), learns that a toy whistle given away inside Cap'n Crunch cereal generates a 2600-hertz signal, the same high-pitched tone that accesses AT&T's long-distance switching system.

1980: Hacker Message Boards and Groups

Phone phreaks begin to move into the realm of computer hacking, and the first electronic bulletin board systems (BBSs) spring up.

1983: Kids' Games

The movie "War Games" introduces the public to hacking, and the legend of hackers as cyberheroes (and anti-heroes) is born. The film's main character, played by Matthew Broderick, attempts to crack into a video game manufacturer's computer to play a game, but instead breaks into the military's nuclear combat simulator computer.

With the TS 1000, the first transatlantic Sinclair computer The TS 1000 was immediately successful, with over 550,000 sold in the six months from its launch in July 1982.

The model 1000 is also irritating to use. If it is jiggled when the memory unit is attached, the television screen hooked up to it sometimes goes blank. The keyboard, drawn on a piece of hard plastic, doesn't have separate keys. The computer also can't produce color graphics or sound and isn't much good for playing games. Consumers who wanted to learn about computers were willing to ignore such shortcomings when the unit was the only one selling for less than $100, but now sales have plummeted.

Since the ARPAnet is still restricted to defense-funded institutions, CBBS is the first civilian experiment in creating virtual community (apart from time-sharing systems). In 1979 most individuals who own computers and modems -- or have access to and knowledge of computing hardware -- are computer hobbyists and scientists. So at first, most topics on CBBS hover within the realm of computers and electronic communication, but eventually the talk broadens. This whole system operated at the slow modem speed (at 300 baud).

CBBS kindles a revolution in electronic communication. Virtual bulletin boards begin popping up around the country; they are given the generic name BBS, for bulletin board system. Some cover a range of topics, and others are intended for highly specific discussions. By the early 1990s most BBSs are connected to the Internet, and a whole new virtual world is introduced to BBS members, who had previously roamed within the limited parameters of one system (or in some cases several interconnected systems).

Before commercial Internet access became common, networks of BBSes provided regional and international e-mail and message bases. Some even provided gateways by which members could send/receive e-mail to/from the Internet.

The VIC-20 operating system was stretched onto the C64. With an estimated retail price of just $595, it was the buzz of the show. It did not hurt that there were no other new powerful machines shown at CES by Commodores competitors that year. The Commodore 64 was alive: it was a immediately ordered into production which hit full stride by August 1982.

The Commodore 64 has sold more than any other computer in history. The Guinness book of Records estimates that there were about 30 MILLION units pushed out of Commodore plants. However, most historians argue that the real number is in the 20 million range. In addition to the 64 being a fabulously powerful machine produced at time of exploding computer popularity, it was also, without doubt the longest production run in history. By this time data was being stored on 5 1/4" floppy disks with 360 k capacity and cassette tapes.

1984 the National Science Foundation got into the act, through its Office of Advanced Scientific Computing.

The new NSFNET set a pace for technical advancement, linking newer, faster supercomputers, through faster links, upgraded and expanded, again and again, in 1986, 1988, 1990.

And other government agencies leapt in: NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy. Foreign computers, and a few American ones, chose to be denoted by their geographical locations.

The others were grouped by the six basic Internet "domains": gov, mil, edu, com, org and net. Gov, Mil, and Edu denoted governmental, military and educational institutions, which were, of course, the pioneers, since ARPANET had begun as a high-tech research exercise in national security. Com, however, stood for "commercial" institutions.

1989, ARPANET itself formally expired, a victim of its own overwhelming success. Its users scarcely noticed, for ARPANET's functions not only continued but steadily improved. The use of TCP/IP standards for computer networking is now global.

Millions of people use this gigantic computer networks. The Internet is especially popular among scientists, and is probably the most important scientific instrument of the late twentieth century. The powerful, sophisticated access that it provides to specialized data and personal communication has sped up the pace of scientific research enormously.

1990s, The Internet's pace of growth is spectacular, almost ferocious. It is spreading faster than cellular phones, faster than fax machines.

By now pc's are becoming commonplace and new models come out more rapidly.