The Epitome of Change

The First Computer

1947: Though Konrad Zuse builds the

fircst electro-mechanical computer–the Z1– in 1941, two developments in 1947 change the face of the computer significantly. These are the invention of the Williams’ tube and the transistor. Sir Frederick Williams of Manchester University modifies a cathode ray tube to paint dots and dashes to represent the binary symbols 0 and 1. And on 23 December, William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen are successful in testing the point-contact transistor to herald the semiconductor revolution. Though the transistor is to be far more significant for future developments, the first race for the Random Access Memory (RAM) is won by the William’s tube, which is used as the primary memory of the vacuum tube machines of these days. 

The genesis of the first electronic digital computer is rooted in a World War II secret military project in University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering. The project–code named PX–takes five years from 1942 and culminates in building the first electronic general-purpose digital computer–the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC). John W Mauchly and J Presper Eckert go down the history pages as the team leaders of the project that laid the foundation of modern computing. Later they also start a company called Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. 

At the end of the ENIAC project, another advancement is worked upon–the stored-program computer. The concept of electronic storage of programming information and data is to replace methods like punched paper tapes in the long run. EDVAC is conceived and built upon this idea. However, it is in 1949 that Maurice Wilkes of Cambridge University took this idea to its conclusion. EDSAC becomes the first practical stored-program computer. Short programmes, called subroutines stored in punched paper tapes, are used for programming. This way, a speed of 714 operations per second is achieved.

1948: Claude Shanon identifies “bit” as the fundamental unit of data in his report, “The Mathematical Theory of Communication”. The same year, on the storage front, the magnetic drum comes as the replacement for punched paper tapes to store programmes and data. Drums register information as magnetic pulses in tracks around a metal cylinder. Drums of this time store as many as 4,000 words and retrieve any one of them in as little as five-thousandths of a second. 

1953: IBM’s first electronic computer–the 701–is shipped. The speed coding done by John Backus for this computer requires more memory but it considerably shortens the programming time. Nineteen such computers are sold during the three years of its existence and are considered a major success during the period. Research labs and government departments are the principal

buyers. The Transistor Era

1955:

Transistors replace vacuum tubes. TRADIC is the first fully transistorized computer. The AT&T Bell Labs developed computer has 800 transistors and can operate on lesser than 100 Watt–one twentieth of the power required by vacuum tubes. 

The Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) is the first big wide area computer network. It consists of MIT-developed Whirlwind II acting as the central computer connecting several other computers at dispersed radar sites across the US and Canada.

The first Integrated Circuit (IC) is developed by Texas Instruments and comprises a germanium sliver with five components linked by wires.

1960: AT&T designs the first commercial modem to convert digital computer signals into analog to send it over its telephone lines. It is called the Dataphone. Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. invents the first Resistor Transistor Logic (RTL) IC and integrates it as a monolithic chip. Consequently produces the gold-doped NPN transistor that is widely accepted.

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is also introduced during this year to facilitate machines from different manufacturers to exchange data. 

1965: Size becomes important. Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) introduces the PDP-8, which becomes the first minicomputer to succeed commercially. However, many people at this time question the use of a personal computer. To them, the computer is simply a huge machine that can calculate and compute data on a large scale and high speed, not usually possible by the human mind.

1967: Scientists at Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. build the first standard Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) chip, which enables the semiconductor material to produce two types of transistors–n-type and p-type. The Computer Comes of Age

1969: Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs develop the UNIX operating system on a DEC minicomputer. The UNIX operating system becomes a widely accepted operating system among engineers and scientists. The US Department of Defence tries out sharing of resources including hardware, software, and databases through the ARPANET. 

1971: An Intel team builds the first microprocessor. The Intel 4004 had 2,250 transistors and could perform 60,000 operations per second. The first personal computer–Kenbak 1–also makes its appearance. 

1972: The Intel 8008 is introduced as the first microprocessor that could handle both the lower and upper case of the letter. 

1973: Robert Metcalfe devises the Ethernet protocol for networking in Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre. Xerox is on a spree of invention. In 1974 it brings out the Alto, the first workstation with an in-built modem. 

Bill Gates makes his first appearance, by co-developing the BASIC with his partner Paul Allen. The BASIC is licensed as the software language for the Altair, an Intel 8080-based computer, which is a huge success during this time. The term Personal Computer (PC) gets rolling as computers begin to be more user-friendly–smaller and more manageable.Larry Roberts contributes in building Telenet, the first commercial packet switching network.

1975: The Tandem also makes its debut, meeting with success in the banking sector. Tandem 16 is fault-tolerant and is built for processing on-line transactions.

1976: The Apple saga begins with Steve Wozniak designing the Apple I. The single-board computer gets the Steves–Wozniaks and Jobs–going. They soon sell 200 of these computers before introducing the Apple II as the complete computer. Apple II combines computer power with aesthetics and is an immediate success. It comes with a computer game called “Breakout” and could be attached to a television to produce colourful graphics. The PC Days Are Here

1981: IBM enters the personal computer market with a bang. Its IBM PCs ignite the growth of this market. It was like, “If IBM is serious about it, there has to be something in it”. It ran on a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor. Bill Gates Microsoft is not doing badly either, as the IBM PC uses MS-DOS as its operating system. 

The world’s first portable computer–the Osborne I–comes with a display which is just 5 inch in length. It is too “heavy” at 24 pounds. 

1983: After two years of a literal monopoly, the IBM PC has some company. Compaq Computers introduces an IBM-compatible PC, using the same software. This goes to create a huge market for IBM-compatible computers.

1984: Apple Macintosh demonstrates What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWUG) word processing with its MacWrite. Mac, with its mouse-driven Graphic User Interface (GUI), is a tremendous success. The same year IBM comes out with PC-AT, which uses Intel 80286 microprocessors. 

The NSFNET links up super computer centres of five major US universities. And soon enough there are many regional networks branching off these nodal centres. The ARPANET is forced to connect to this network, too. The NSFNET transfers data at a rate of 56 kilobits per second. 

1985: The first CD-ROM is “Grolier’s Electronic Encyclopaedia”. There is enough space left after accommodating more than nine million words of the encyclopaedia. 

1986: The Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC), which is based upon the fact that just about 20 percent of a computer’s instruction set does most of the work, is developed. IBM releases PC/RT, an RISC-based workstation. MIPS also brings out its R-2000-based 



systems.

The same year, Compaq pips IBM in the race for the PC market. It launches the Deskpro 386, using Intel 80386 chip. The 386 introduces the 32-bit architecture which is a far-reaching improvement over the previous 16-bit architecture. This enables the PC to achieve speed and power which was till then associated with mainframes and minicomputers.

1989: The Intel 486 chip doubles the performance of the 386 without increasing the clock rate. The Internet Revolutionizes Computing



1990: Bill Gates unveils the Windows for the first time. It enables the 386 to support large graphical applications and allows multiple programmes to be run parallel through its innovative Window interfaces. Tin Berners Lee, a CERN researcher, develops the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), which allows the Internet to expand into the World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW is first commercially available a year later. The Internet takes off.

1993: Pentium-based systems start shipping. The computers have a 60-MHz Pentium, 64-bit bus, 32-bit registers, and 3.2 million transistors. It is just the size of a small box with a normal TV-sized monitor. It sits just right on a work table and is manageable by even a child unlike the first computer, ENIAC, which occupied an entire room and had several people managing it. 



The Pentium marks the computer of the Internet era–high speed, more storage, and more powerful. Surfing the Net becomes enjoyable instead of a pain. Soon enough, there are others in the game of high-speed chips. AMD and Cyrix join the race. And chip after chip gets released leaving users gasping. Intel follows up its original Pentium with Pentium Pro, Pentium II, and Pentium III in the years to come. 

1995: Windows 95 is released and one million copies are sold through retail in the first four days. It drives the computing world into a new phenomenon. Microsoft comes out with its many versions in the future. The world accuses Gates of monopolizing the desktop. By late 1990s, Microsoft has fought many court battles on this count. However, the spread of Microsoft Windows is so complete that more than half of the PCs in the world greet their users with the Windows logo every morning. 

NSFNET reverts to research network and commercial providers begin carrying the backbone Internet traffic. Compuserve, AOL, and Prodigy

begin providing commercial Internet access.

2000: World-wide PC shipment rises to a new high of 123 million, according to IDC estimate. There are about 400 million PCs in the world. And many more devices have taken the role of the PC. There is the Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) like the Palmpilot, which is more mobile than the notebook PCs/laptops. There is the next generation telephone which also acts like the PC, including the mobile phones like Nokia 7110 which uses algorithm to enable predictive text typing with its number buttons. The television connected to a set top box becomes a WebTV, taking the role of a PC in the homes. The Internet changes the world of computing. The browser greets you with your files, web pages, video files, music numbers. At the end of the day, you save your e-mails and documents in your company web server sitting at home.