Sunday, December 20, 2009
ATARI REVEALS ITS NEW VCS VIDEO GAME CONSOLE (JULY 1977)
A new generation of games was born in the summer of 1977, a new concept revolutionizing leisure will let small leading and foreseeing companies make billions of dollars. Although the Atari VCS is not the first video game console ever, it will become a star while beginning in November of 1977. Millions of young players will hold it as mankind’s best invention ever. The first console idea was developed in 1975 by Atari and Warner Bros, its parent company. Initially the console was set to come with an integrated ROM game, but at the last minute, Atari preferred a cartridge version. This game was “Combat”. Most importantly, this first cartridge will allow console owners to wait a few months for the release of new games. A first series of 8 will be followed later by many, among them, the famous “Space Invaders”, a title giving Atari global success and will cash in more then $100 millions. In two years, Atari sold more than 25 million consoles and earn $5 billion in sales, mostly from cartridges and optional accessories. Many third companies will also encounter success, such as Namco and its “Pacman”. In 1982, the VCS becomes “2600” until Atari is sold in 1984, followed by new versions “5200” and “7800”. However, the 2600 continued to be produced and new games will appear until 1991. The VCS/2600 console thus lived for 14 years, a record longevity never equaled since by any console or computer. Thanks to the Albert's Museum for the picture.
LEAR-SIEGLER INTRODUCES THE ADM-3A VIDEO DISPLAY TERMINAL (VDT) (JUNE 1977
Did you know each time you visit the Old-computers home page, you see a Lear-Siegler ADM-3A terminal... displaying a READY message and a blinking cursor...The ADM-3A was one of the first affordable serial display terminals manufactered by Lear-Siegler, Inc of Anaheim California.Why ADM? Nobody knows, maybe American Dream Machine or Awful Dumb Monitor or Advanced Display Module or, more seriously, Anaheim Division, Manufacturing...Why 3A? We know... Because this version quickly replaced a previous one, called ADM-3, which only displayed upper-case letters. The 3A version did not display upper-case letters, but an optional chip set allows them to be displayed The product was originally sold in assembled form for $1,195. A kit version would appear few months later, at $995. It could be ordered with a white, green, or amber tube background colour.The ADM-3A quickly met with great success thanks to its reliability and low price.Some models were also manufactured with a graphics add-on card of about the same size as its motherboard. With that card installed, the terminal emulated Tectronix 4014 graphics quite well. The setup of this 'Dumb machine' (as Lear Siegler advertised) was done using... 32 dip switches (!) located at the left of the keyboard. Among them, 11 was used for the communication rate (from 75 to 19200 bauds), others for parity, display configuration, character set, etc.Thanks to Sebastien Richter and his website for the system image.
COMMODORE INTRODUCES THE PET (JUNE 1977)
The PET 2001 (Personal Electronic Transactor) was the first computer unit ready to plug in to a mains supply and use. This concept, added to a futuristic design, caused an enormous sensation at The 1977 Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. In fact, a first PET model was presented during the January CES, but it never worked properly.The PET was the first computer sold by Jack Tramiel. A legend says that, one day, Chuck Peddle, the designer of the 6502 microprocessor, accosted him in a corridor and asked him to forget hand held calculators and think about a desktop computer. Tramiel said, "Build it" and Chuck built the PET computer based on the 6502 microprocessor! The PET name would be used only until the 4000 series as Philips, the owner of the registered PET name, would require Commodore to use a different name. Commodore would choose the CBM logo for the later systems. Original sale price of the 4 KB PET was $495. Several hundred orders later, the price would go to $595 for the 4 KB version and $795 for the 8 KB. Several thousand orders later Jack Tramiel decided to double the price and to market the computer in Europe. The sales won't weaken.Within a few months, many dealers wanted to sell the PET. But Tramiel dictated his terms: To pay cash on order and wait for the computers for about five months, to have a clean credit history and good retail and service departments.While being very demanding with the dealer network, Tramiel approached the big retail chain stores, and within a few weeks, the dealers were in direct competition with the household names.The PET system would become the father of a large family of PET/CBM computers including the 2000, 4000, 8000 series, then the 500, 600 and 700 series in 1983.
THE Z80-A BECOMES AVAILABLE IN PRODUCTION QUANTITIES (MAY 1977)
At its new manufacturing facilities in Cupertino, Zilog announced the manufacture of the Z80-A in February 24 1977. The Z80-A has a standard clock rate of 4 Mhz. which is made possible by a new technology developped by Zilog. Single quantity prices are $65 for the ceramic package and $59 for the plastic version. According to Zilog, the Z80-A is considered to be the fastest standard microprocessor. Its instructions cycle is 1 µs, and its throughput is 60% above the one of the Z80.From now, it becomes available in production quantities for computer manufacturers. The standard Z80 at a clock rate of 2.5 Mhz. wil be continued at a reduced price.
MITS - ALTAIR COMPANY IS SOLD TO PERTEC (MAY 1977)
MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) was founded in 1968 by Ed Roberts and two friends. MITS first made radio control devices, then calculators and in 1975 the Altair 8800 and 8800a microcomputer kits. The 8800 system was sold for $397, a very attractive price. It is now considered by many to be the first real personal microcomputer any computer hobbyist could buy and use at home. Therefore, MITS and the Altair truly created the personal computer industry and changed the way many people live and work. The Altair 8800 was also the first computer using a built-in Basic interpreter written by two guys working at MITS and called Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Though the company maintained its lead as the primary seller, in 1976 MITS was in trouble. The company had grown too big too fast and had too many projects going on at the same time. Computers hardware quality was not good, products were failing, and customers were complaining. Communication within the company began to deteriorate. Paul Allen and Bill Gates both left MITS to develop their own company, Micro-Soft. Many manufacturers copied the Altair concept and one's heard about modern easy-to-use computers called Apple or Commodore. In May 1977, Ed Roberts decided to sell MITS to Pertec for $6 million, a larger company that manufactured disks and tape drives for minicomputers and mainframe computers. Sadly, the sale of the company did not solve problems. The Pertec management team came in with new ideas and a new way of working and MITS people began to leave the company. Even Roberts became fed up with Pertec and left too. Pertec continued making Altairs small business System for about a year after the acquisition, moving away from the "Hobbyist Computer" image of the 8800. Computer production ceased definitively in July 1978.
MITS - ALTAIR COMPANY IS SOLD TO PERTEC (MAY 1977)
MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems) was founded in 1968 by Ed Roberts and two friends. MITS first made radio control devices, then calculators and in 1975 the Altair 8800 and 8800a microcomputer kits. The 8800 system was sold for $397, a very attractive price. It is now considered by many to be the first real personal microcomputer any computer hobbyist could buy and use at home. Therefore, MITS and the Altair truly created the personal computer industry and changed the way many people live and work. The Altair 8800 was also the first computer using a built-in Basic interpreter written by two guys working at MITS and called Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Though the company maintained its lead as the primary seller, in 1976 MITS was in trouble. The company had grown too big too fast and had too many projects going on at the same time. Computers hardware quality was not good, products were failing, and customers were complaining. Communication within the company began to deteriorate. Paul Allen and Bill Gates both left MITS to develop their own company, Micro-Soft. Many manufacturers copied the Altair concept and one's heard about modern easy-to-use computers called Apple or Commodore. In May 1977, Ed Roberts decided to sell MITS to Pertec for $6 million, a larger company that manufactured disks and tape drives for minicomputers and mainframe computers. Sadly, the sale of the company did not solve problems. The Pertec management team came in with new ideas and a new way of working and MITS people began to leave the company. Even Roberts became fed up with Pertec and left too. Pertec continued making Altairs small business System for about a year after the acquisition, moving away from the "Hobbyist Computer" image of the 8800. Computer production ceased definitively in July 1978.
APPLE II, FIRST DELIVERIES (MAY 1977)
The Apple II system is really available and delivered for $1295. The system was introduced in April at the West Coast Computer Fair, just after the Apple Computer Company was incorporated and Apple employees move from Jobs' garage to an office in Cupertino, California. Apple logo is designed by Rob Janoff. The first Apple II advert is designed too (picture). Apple Computers wil be the first company to advertise for a personal computer in general public magazines. The Apple 1 production is stopped ten months after its introduction. 175 Apple 1 kits had been sold for $549 each to only one customer, Paul Terrell, manager of the Byte Shop chain, who sold them for $666.
STAN VEIT OPENS COMPUTER MART OF NEW YORK (FEBRUARY 1976)
Stan Veit opens Computer Mart of New York, second computer store and first to sell more thas one brand of computers.
8008 MICROPROCESSOR RELEASED BY INTEL. (APRIL 1972
The Intel 8008 was an early byte-oriented microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and introduced in April 1972. Originally known as the 1201, the chip was commissioned by Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) to implement an instruction set designed for their Datapoint 2200 programmable terminal. As the chip was delayed and did not meet CTC's performance goals, the 2200 ended up using CTC's own TTL based CPU instead. An agreement permitted Intel to market the chip to other customers after Seiko expressed an interest in using it for a calculator. HistoryCTC formed in San Antonio in 1968 under the direction of Austin O. "Gus" Roche and Phil Ray, both NASA engineers. Roche, in particular, was primarily interested in producing a desktop computer. However, given the immaturity of the market, the company's business plan mentioned only a ASR-33 Teletype replacement, which shipped as the Datapoint 3300. The case, designed by John "Jack" Frassanito, was deliberately designed to fit in the same space as an IBM Selectric typewriter, and used a video screen shaped to be the same aspect ratio as the IBM 029 punch card terminal. Although commercially successful, the 3300 had ongoing heat problems due to the amount of circuitry packed into such a small space. In order to address the heating and other issues, a re-design started that featured all of the internal circuitry re-implemented on a single chip. Looking for a company able to produce their chip design, Roche turned to Intel, then primarily a vendor of memory chips. Roche met with Bob Noyce, who expressed concern with the concept; Frassanito recalls that "Noyce said it was an intriguing idea, and that Intel could do it, but it would be a dumb move. He said that if you have a computer chip, you can only sell one chip per computer, while with memory, you can sell hundreds of chips per computer." Another major concern was that Intel's existing customer base purchased their memory chips for use with their own processor designs; if Intel introduced their own processor they might be seen as a competitor, and their customers might look elsewhere for memory. Nevertheless, Noyce agreed to a $50,000 development contract in early 1970. Texas Instruments (TI) was also brought in as a second supplier. TI was able to quickly make samples of the 1201 based on Intel drawings, but these proved to be buggy and were rejected. Intel's own versions were delayed. CTC decided to re-implement the new version of the terminal using discrete TTL instead of a single CPU. The new system was released as the Datapoint 2200 in the spring 1970, with their first sale to General Mills on 25 May 1970. CTC paused development of the 1201 after the 2200 was released, as it was no longer needed. Six months later, Seiko approached Intel expressing an interest in using the 1201 in a scientific calculator, likely after seeing the success of the simpler Intel 4004 used by Busicom in their business calculators. A small re-design followed, expanding from a 16-pin to 18-pin design, and the new 1210 was delivered to CTC in late 1971. By that point CTC had once again moved on, this time to the Datapoint 2200 II, which was faster and included a hard drive. The 1201 was no longer powerful enough for the new model. CTC voted to end their involvement with the 1201, leaving the design's intellectual property to Intel instead of paying the $50,000 contract. Intel renamed it the 8008, and put it in their catalog in April 1972 priced at $120. Intel's initial worries about their existing customer base leaving them proved unfounded, and the 8008 went on to be a commercially successful design. This was followed by the Intel 8080, and then the hugely successful Intel x86 family. DesignImplemented in 10 μm silicon-gate enhancement load PMOS, initial versions of the 8008 ran at 0.5 MHz, later increased in the 8008-1 to 0.8 MHz. Instructions took between 3 and 11 cycles: register-register loads and ALU operations took 5T (10μs at 0.5 MHz), register-memory 8T (16μs), while (taken) calls and jumps took 11 cycles (22μs). The 8008 was a little slower in terms of instructions per second (45,000 to 100,000) [1] than the 4-bit Intel 4004 and Intel 4040, but the fact that the 8008 processed data eight bits at a time and could access significantly more RAM still gave it a significant speed advantage in most applications. The 8008 had 3,500 transistors. The subsequent Intel 8080 and 8085 CPUs were also heavily based on the same basic design; even the x86 architecture (originally a non-strict extension of the 8085) loosely resembles the original Datapoint 2200 design (every instruction of the 8008's instruction set has a direct equivalent in the 8080's larger instruction set and Intel Core 2's even larger instruction set, although the opcode values are different in all three). The chip (limited by its 18 pin DIP packaging) had a single 8-bit bus and required a significant amount of external support logic. For example, the 14-bit address, which could access "16 K x 8 bits of memory"[4], needed to be latched by some of this logic into an external Memory Address Register (MAR). The 8008 could access 8 input ports and 24 output ports. For controller and CRT terminal use this was an acceptable design, but it was too difficult to use for most other tasks. A few early computer designs were based on it, but most would use the later and greatly improved Intel 8080 instead. The 8008 family is also referred to as the MCS-8.
THE MOTHER OF ALL DEMOS (DECEMBER 1968)
Back in 1968, one man had a vision. This vision regarded sharing informations. The computer revolution gave the user a massive strength but very little was done to help people to work together.Mouse, hyperlinks and email where shown that day by Doug Engelbart and his researchers at Stanford during a 90 minute presentation. But most of all the desire for open exchange of informations fueled the demonstration. And that desire is still alive today as it needs to be fulfilled. Internet and the Open Source movement embodies part of what he wanted to demonstrate.Many GUI's concept were shown, as the mouse pointer, copy and paste functions, hierarchical organization of data. We can say that many Xerox PARC studies start probably from here...Still that day he talked about the ARPAnet project in which a few computerswere linked on a network and that with a certain bandwidth he might present his demo from another town (yes net conference!)
The demo itself:
The demo itself:
OUTER SPACE! (JULY 1961)
Yup, it costed $120,000 but the second of them produced was given free to the MIT Labs (Thanks DEC) It was simply revolutionary. It occupied the room of three big refrigerators, it had a CRT and the usual Flexowriter for input/output and most important it didn't need air conditioning and used conventional 110 Volt supply!It used words of 18 bits and a basic setup had memory (core magnetic type) for up to 4096 words and expandable to 65536 The Flexowriter could read and write paper tapes used for storing programs. As the PDP-1 arrived at the MIT Labs those hackers saw it as a further step that might have taken their dream closer to reality. The Hackers Who were these guys? They were a bunch of students and professors at MIT (namely Peter Samson, Alan Kotok, John McCarthy, Slug Russell, and others…)They were interested in systems. It could be a model railway track or a phone system or whatever else. They studied and experimented with them endlessy, maybe not going to the classes and never got graduated but that was not the point. The point was to hack more!They had a sort of unwritten manifesto that can be resumed here: (from Hackers written by S.Levy)Access to computers should be unlimited and total!All information should be free.Mistrust authority - Promote Decentralization.Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degree, age, race or position.You can create art and beauty on a computer.But above all…Computer can change your life for the better.At the labs they fight for access on a computer, moved by the 'hands on' imperative. They coded hard with those first microcomputers (?!) and the will to improve their results every time was astounding. No matter how many hours they worked they liked to give the system a new feature. So if you gave a project to a hacker it would always be a work in progress......and the Spacewar
Slug Russell thought about some cool demo to program on this beauty, the PDP-1. The CRT was then a great feature of the PDP-1 as it was easily programmable. The PDP-1 had also been used to produce music already. Hackers had also written a new assembler in about a weekend of work replacing the standard factory version, which they thought it wasn't efficient enough!So Slug thought about a game, a game about duel in an outer space between two ships! A graphic algorithm developed by prof. Minsky called ‘Three Position Display’ initially inspired him. Alan Kotok provided another piece with some routines for tracing the ships positions on screen.Then after some coding Slug defined some elements of its game. He decided the shapes of the two ships and the controls for them: clockwise turn, counter-clockwise turn, accelerate and fire torpedo. He finished a first version and demoed it to the others.What you would expect? The hackers started to improve it! In a totally free environment every contribution was added to the game. Someone corrected the trajectory for the torpedoes, Peter Samson defined a new map for the sky background (now it represented a map with all the real constellations, not just a random dotted screen), and then a central sun was added and simulated a gravity effect as the ship could orbit around it or burn into it if too close. Even a rudimental joystick was built then as using the PDP-1 front panel switches was rather painful...The greatest feature was the hyperspace launch. Sometimes when you got in trouble you could fly into the nth space and your ship would appear in another (random) point of the screen, maybe next to the central sun :)This work was made available totally free on the usual paper tapes. Some one argued maybe some dollars could be made out of it but that wasn't the point then. Actually the game was well spread in the country already so it was impossible to control! Even at DEC at some time they used to demo and test the machine at the factory!So if you play to one of those arcade shooting game remember where all come from…from a university lab! Thanks to Marco Chrappan for information and pictures.
Slug Russell thought about some cool demo to program on this beauty, the PDP-1. The CRT was then a great feature of the PDP-1 as it was easily programmable. The PDP-1 had also been used to produce music already. Hackers had also written a new assembler in about a weekend of work replacing the standard factory version, which they thought it wasn't efficient enough!So Slug thought about a game, a game about duel in an outer space between two ships! A graphic algorithm developed by prof. Minsky called ‘Three Position Display’ initially inspired him. Alan Kotok provided another piece with some routines for tracing the ships positions on screen.Then after some coding Slug defined some elements of its game. He decided the shapes of the two ships and the controls for them: clockwise turn, counter-clockwise turn, accelerate and fire torpedo. He finished a first version and demoed it to the others.What you would expect? The hackers started to improve it! In a totally free environment every contribution was added to the game. Someone corrected the trajectory for the torpedoes, Peter Samson defined a new map for the sky background (now it represented a map with all the real constellations, not just a random dotted screen), and then a central sun was added and simulated a gravity effect as the ship could orbit around it or burn into it if too close. Even a rudimental joystick was built then as using the PDP-1 front panel switches was rather painful...The greatest feature was the hyperspace launch. Sometimes when you got in trouble you could fly into the nth space and your ship would appear in another (random) point of the screen, maybe next to the central sun :)This work was made available totally free on the usual paper tapes. Some one argued maybe some dollars could be made out of it but that wasn't the point then. Actually the game was well spread in the country already so it was impossible to control! Even at DEC at some time they used to demo and test the machine at the factory!So if you play to one of those arcade shooting game remember where all come from…from a university lab! Thanks to Marco Chrappan for information and pictures.
COMMODORE INTERNATIONAL IS FOUNDED (month unknown 1954)
In 1954, Commodore International was founded by Jack Tramiel, an Auschwitz survivor, and Manfred Kapp, as a typewriter-repair service.
Tramiel was born on December 13, 1927 in Lodz in Poland and spent the years from 1940 to 1945 in a German concentration camp. Other sources indicate that his name was originally Kaufmann Idek Tramiel or Tramielski and that he was born on September 13, 1927 or December 13, 1928. He appears to have entered the United States in 1947 and to have been in the United States Army from 1948 to 1950 when he was a cook and for less than a year in 1951-2 when he was a typewriter repair man. Between his tours of duty in the army and for a time after his second tour, he worked for a company called Ace Typewriter Repair Company. Between 1952 and 1954, he drove a taxicab in the New York City. Tramiel first met Manfred Kapp in 1952 or 1953 when they were fellow-employees at the Ace Typewriter Repair Company.
Tramiel was born on December 13, 1927 in Lodz in Poland and spent the years from 1940 to 1945 in a German concentration camp. Other sources indicate that his name was originally Kaufmann Idek Tramiel or Tramielski and that he was born on September 13, 1927 or December 13, 1928. He appears to have entered the United States in 1947 and to have been in the United States Army from 1948 to 1950 when he was a cook and for less than a year in 1951-2 when he was a typewriter repair man. Between his tours of duty in the army and for a time after his second tour, he worked for a company called Ace Typewriter Repair Company. Between 1952 and 1954, he drove a taxicab in the New York City. Tramiel first met Manfred Kapp in 1952 or 1953 when they were fellow-employees at the Ace Typewriter Repair Company.
COMPUTERS - SOME HISTORY AND BACKGROUND #1 (month unknown 1915)
By Darwyn F. KelleyComputer Historian
What is the difference between a Computer and a Calculator? One the most satisfactory definition states, "An automatic computer is a machine that manipulates symbols in accordance with given rules in a predetermined and self-directed manner.."The most significant word here undoubtedly is "self directed". Any calculating device whether it be an abacus or an adding machine must be other-directed, that is, man directed.An automatic computer, however has the ability to accept data and then work upon that data according to a preset program without human intervention, although human beings must, of course, devise the program which controls the automatic manipulation of the data. Regardless whether the computer is one of the special-purpose types for solving engineering and scientific problems or a general-purpose computer manufactured in large quantities, the principle remains the same.How did computers come into being and why did anyone want to build one in the first place? Starting from crude methods of piling stones to represent numbers and proceeding hrough such ingenious devices as the abacus, he has long been in pursuit of improved calculating methods. He has always been limited however, by the state of technology in the times in which he lived. As long ago as the 1820's Charles Babbage, in England made a "difference engine"., which was sound in principle, but which unfortunately was very unreliable due to the availability of only crudely machined parts. The first true computer to be manufactured in any quantities was Ford Instrument Computer in 1915. A mechanical analog device. The Ford Computer was a marvel of gear trains, linkages, and differentials. It was difficult to keep in adjustment and very complicated to manufacture, but it did the job it was intended to do- find and keep the range for naval guns.In 1930, the first general-purpose computer was built at MIT under the direction of Dr. Vannever Bush. It to was a mechanical monster, but it could be disconnected and reconnected to solve different equations.All of these devices were analog. That is they operated on real inputs such as voltages or the rotation of gears and they produced real outputs, such as training of the guns of a main battery. Analog computers have both advantages and disadvantages. They produce almost instantaneous output, but since they act upon analogies to numbers rather than on numbers themselves, their output is never perfectly accurate. They can be used to train a gun but not to calculate a payroll.In 1939, a major breakthrough occurred when Dr. Howard Aiken of Harvard completed the basic plans for a sequential, digital, electromechanical computer. This computer was an unwieldy conglomeration of office calculating devices, but it embodied two important concepts. First, it operated on real numbers, rather than on analogs of numbers, and, second it had the ability to make decisions. That is, it could compare two numbers when a partial result had been obtained and then follow one of two paths for further computation, depending upon the result of the comparison. All computers operate on this principle today.Dr. Aiken's machine was still an electromechanical device and naturally was subject to failure through wear and tear and had such commonplace troubles as simply getting dirty. Also there were obvious physical limitation on the speeds which it could be operated.The next major breakthrough came in 1946, when the first all-electronic, digital sequential computer was delivered. It was many times faster and far more reliable than any mechanical computer could be. It was an invention of J. Presper Eckert and Dr. John Mauchly, who later formed a company which eventually became, the UNIVAC Division of Sperry Rand. The name of this first Electronic Computer was ENIAC. (Acronym for :Electronic Numeric Integrated Automatic Computer). It was the father of all modern electronic computers.Next, in rapid succession came BINAC, the first computer with serial logic; Univac I , the first commercial computer, the Univac 1103A, the first computer to use core storage, the Univac Solid State, the first all Solid State Computer to be offered commercially, The Univac LARC, the world's most powerful computer at that time.
The ENIAC computer, pictured above was installed ,at Aberdeen Proving Grounds , Aberdeen, Maryland. It weighed nearly 30 tons and occupied 15,000 square feet of floor space.ENIAC contained more than 19,000 vacuum tubes which were used to perform 5,000 additions per second. .As one might expect, making ENIAC function was a tedious task. Operators used plug boards and wires to program the desires operations and entered the numbers used in calculations by turning a series of dials until they corresponded to the correct digits.By today's standards, ENIAC was slow, but it was 60 times faster than the mechanical differential analyzer which it replaced and at that time this was a large advance. ENIAC led the computer field during the period 1949 through 1952 when it served as the main computer workhouse for the solution of scientific problems of the Nation. It was the major instrument for the computation of all ballistic tables for the U.S. Army and Air Force. As a Sperry Univac, Senior System Engineer, assigned to the Univac installation at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1957. ENIAC was delivered to the Ballistics Research Laboratory, (BRL) in 1946, therefore I missed this installation but did have many discussions with the personnel that used to work on this first amazing computer. It actually was not used to solve "Knotty Nuclear Problems" , but actually computed firing tables for the White Sands missile range.BRL also had many firsts., EDVAC and ORDVAC Computers were very powerful military computers which replaced ENIAC. Around 1958/1959 BRL decided to build a very advanced Scientific Computer. BRLESC. (BRL Electronic Scientific Computer). This was a very expensive and powerful computer but it did contain vacuum tubes at the time when all commercial computers were switching to solid state devices. This computer was made obsolete by Solid State Technology.
BINAC
The next machine produced by the Eckert & Mauchly team was Binac, special-purpose computer, Only one was built. Binac embodied four important advances, however: it used serial instead of parallel logic; it was the first computer to be internally programmed; it was the first computer to use magnetic tape; and it was the first computer to use solid state elements. Internal programming eliminated the time-consuming and tedious task of changing a problem by connecting external cables.
In parallel-logic systems, if one wishes to add two 3 digit numbers, one provides three add circuits, one for each column. In a serial machine, the columns are added one at a time, sequentially. This arrangement eliminates many parts and, of course, when the number of parts goes down so does the cost.Binac's use of Magnetic tape was limited to small reels. Small as it was, however, this 2 inch reel was the forerunner of the complex tape input and storage systems.In part, Binac achieved the speed necessary to the successful operation of a serial machine by the use of crystal diodes instead of vacuum tubes for switches. All sequential machines really are giant switching networks. Vacuum tubes still were used for amplification, but this first use of crystal diodes, as long ago as 1948, foreshadowed today's all solid-state machines with their greatly increased speeds and greatly reduced size, power and cooling requirements, and costs. A solid state component uses the flow of electrons through a solid material.
After Binac, new developments came thick and fast. The memory utilized in Binac was mercury tank memory. The design of this storage device was based on the very simple fact that an electrical pulse could be converted to a sound pulse (by means of piezo-electric quartz crystal and that this sound crystal would travel at relative low speed through a body of mercury. When it came out the other end, it could be reconverted to an electrical pulse by another crystal, amplified, and sent back into the tank. The net result was that the "bit" of information kept circulating until such time until called for by the computers circuitry. Mercury Delay Memory was also utilized in the
One of the largest factors in the success of UNIVAC I was the revolutionary input-output equipment offered with it. All input to the computer and output from it was by means of magnetic tape. The magnetic tapes were prepared off-line by a Unityper and information from them was printed out (also offline) by a Uniprinter. A keyboard and a typewriter were also provided with UNIVAC I for getting information into and out of the computer, but these generally were used in the course of checking out programs and rarely during the actual computer run.The Uniservo I was for communication and intermediate storage between the input-output devices and the computer. The magnetic tape was recorded at 120 digits per inch and could move past the read-write heads at 100 inches per second. Since Mylar tape had not been invented and the other alternative was acetate film, (which was very unstable), Univac choose to use metallic tape. Uniservo used small tape reels because they each weighed 25 lbs, but were very reliable. Also vacuum buffering was not yet invented so the buffering technique was to use elaborate rubber bands.Before long, the Card-To-Tape Converter was added to the input-output array. It read punched cards and converted the data into pulses on magnetic tape ate the rate of 240 cards per minute. A single standard reel of tape could hold as many as 4000 punched cards. A new High Speed printer was introduced which read magnetic tape and printed at 600 lines per minute. Newer High-Speed Printers operated at about 720 lines per minute but technology at that time limited printer speeds to 720 line per minute.Improvement in Technology was an ongoing process. The Unityper II, occupied 2 cubic feet instead of 20. Besides costing less to begin width it costs less to maintain. Uniservo II tapes moved at the same speed as the Uniservo I tapes- 100 inches per second but they were effectively twice as fast because twice as much information was recorded per inch.
UNIVAC File Computer
Remington Rand, through its acquisitions of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) in February 1950 and Engineering Associates (ERA) in December 1951 became the leading (and for a brief time the only) computer vendor in the world. Remington Rand decided to market a medium -scale computer to be called the UNIVAC File Computer. As its name indicated the File Computer was intended to provide access to data files stores on magnetic drums. This was very unusual for that time. Most computers read in data records from punched cards, paper tape or magnetic tape, process them back out to cards or tape, but they had no provision for long term on-line storage of data. The original File Computer had a 1,070 word drum, a memory that had twelve 6-bit digits or characters per word. The computer performed decimal arithmetic on numbers represented in Excess-3(XS-3) code. In XS-3, each decimal digit was represented by a binary value three higher, that is, 0 by 000011, 1 by 000100, etc. There were also codes for letters and special characters, such as 0101100 for A, 010101 for B and so on. The 1070-word drum which had an average access time of 2.5 milliseconds, was for storage of data actually being worked on by the program. General storage data was provided by from one to ten 15,000 word drums, whose average access time was 17 milliseconds. It was possible to have a processor which did tape sorting and collating, separately from the central processor.Besides doing the usual sort of batch work, the File Computer could provide interactive access to the stored data via one to ten terminals, which were called "input-output devices", An input-output device consisted of an inquiry typewriter, a punched card unit(using either 80 or 90 column punched cards), a paper type unit, a printer, and an optional Magnetic Tape drive. The input-output devices could operate independently from the Central Processing complex and perform input-output operations while the processor was doing something else.The File Computer Model 1 was built in 1957. It has twenty words of core storage, a tiny amount, but enough to provide for some internal programming capability, It allowed for a combination of internal and plug board instructions in the same operation, There were 27 instructions in the internal instruction set, including the arithmetic, comparison, jumps, suppression of left zeros, test for input from I/O station, and transfer to the plug board. The plug board had 19 operations, one of which transfer of control to the program memory. The memory instructions were twelve-digits in length, the last three specified the instruction code, while the others comprised three three-digit storage addresses. A field upgrade was later available which replaced the main memory drum with 1740 words of core memory this upgrade increased the operating speed by a factor of 3.6.Eastern Airlines used a File Computer for their reservation system. In 1957 Eastern and the St. Paul engineering staff developed a terminal device, called an agent set, for use on the File Computer, which had a keyboard and push-button matrix for selection of the function to be performed. A demonstration of the agent set took place in August 1957, but the reservation system did not start running until September 1958. The system covered nine cities (Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Houston, New Orleans, New York-Newark, Philadelphia and Washington) and within two months was processing one transaction per second. Northwest Airlines started using this reservation system in November 1959 and Capitol Airlines followed in early 1960. Douglas Aircraft Company was the largest user of File Computers, with 7 installations. Other users of the File Computer included the C&P Telephone Co., Western Electric, Michigan Bell, First National City Bank, various Army and Marine Corp bases. (The photos above were taken by this writer in 1958 at Edgewood Army Chemical Center, Edgewood, Maryland)A series of development delays meant that the File Computers were delivered toward the end of the vacuum-tube generation of computer hardware. Transistor (second generation) computers began appearing in quantity in 1960 and 1961. These new Solid State computers made vacuum-tube computers such as the File Computer obsolete.
What is the difference between a Computer and a Calculator? One the most satisfactory definition states, "An automatic computer is a machine that manipulates symbols in accordance with given rules in a predetermined and self-directed manner.."The most significant word here undoubtedly is "self directed". Any calculating device whether it be an abacus or an adding machine must be other-directed, that is, man directed.An automatic computer, however has the ability to accept data and then work upon that data according to a preset program without human intervention, although human beings must, of course, devise the program which controls the automatic manipulation of the data. Regardless whether the computer is one of the special-purpose types for solving engineering and scientific problems or a general-purpose computer manufactured in large quantities, the principle remains the same.How did computers come into being and why did anyone want to build one in the first place? Starting from crude methods of piling stones to represent numbers and proceeding hrough such ingenious devices as the abacus, he has long been in pursuit of improved calculating methods. He has always been limited however, by the state of technology in the times in which he lived. As long ago as the 1820's Charles Babbage, in England made a "difference engine"., which was sound in principle, but which unfortunately was very unreliable due to the availability of only crudely machined parts. The first true computer to be manufactured in any quantities was Ford Instrument Computer in 1915. A mechanical analog device. The Ford Computer was a marvel of gear trains, linkages, and differentials. It was difficult to keep in adjustment and very complicated to manufacture, but it did the job it was intended to do- find and keep the range for naval guns.In 1930, the first general-purpose computer was built at MIT under the direction of Dr. Vannever Bush. It to was a mechanical monster, but it could be disconnected and reconnected to solve different equations.All of these devices were analog. That is they operated on real inputs such as voltages or the rotation of gears and they produced real outputs, such as training of the guns of a main battery. Analog computers have both advantages and disadvantages. They produce almost instantaneous output, but since they act upon analogies to numbers rather than on numbers themselves, their output is never perfectly accurate. They can be used to train a gun but not to calculate a payroll.In 1939, a major breakthrough occurred when Dr. Howard Aiken of Harvard completed the basic plans for a sequential, digital, electromechanical computer. This computer was an unwieldy conglomeration of office calculating devices, but it embodied two important concepts. First, it operated on real numbers, rather than on analogs of numbers, and, second it had the ability to make decisions. That is, it could compare two numbers when a partial result had been obtained and then follow one of two paths for further computation, depending upon the result of the comparison. All computers operate on this principle today.Dr. Aiken's machine was still an electromechanical device and naturally was subject to failure through wear and tear and had such commonplace troubles as simply getting dirty. Also there were obvious physical limitation on the speeds which it could be operated.The next major breakthrough came in 1946, when the first all-electronic, digital sequential computer was delivered. It was many times faster and far more reliable than any mechanical computer could be. It was an invention of J. Presper Eckert and Dr. John Mauchly, who later formed a company which eventually became, the UNIVAC Division of Sperry Rand. The name of this first Electronic Computer was ENIAC. (Acronym for :Electronic Numeric Integrated Automatic Computer). It was the father of all modern electronic computers.Next, in rapid succession came BINAC, the first computer with serial logic; Univac I , the first commercial computer, the Univac 1103A, the first computer to use core storage, the Univac Solid State, the first all Solid State Computer to be offered commercially, The Univac LARC, the world's most powerful computer at that time.
The ENIAC computer, pictured above was installed ,at Aberdeen Proving Grounds , Aberdeen, Maryland. It weighed nearly 30 tons and occupied 15,000 square feet of floor space.ENIAC contained more than 19,000 vacuum tubes which were used to perform 5,000 additions per second. .As one might expect, making ENIAC function was a tedious task. Operators used plug boards and wires to program the desires operations and entered the numbers used in calculations by turning a series of dials until they corresponded to the correct digits.By today's standards, ENIAC was slow, but it was 60 times faster than the mechanical differential analyzer which it replaced and at that time this was a large advance. ENIAC led the computer field during the period 1949 through 1952 when it served as the main computer workhouse for the solution of scientific problems of the Nation. It was the major instrument for the computation of all ballistic tables for the U.S. Army and Air Force. As a Sperry Univac, Senior System Engineer, assigned to the Univac installation at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1957. ENIAC was delivered to the Ballistics Research Laboratory, (BRL) in 1946, therefore I missed this installation but did have many discussions with the personnel that used to work on this first amazing computer. It actually was not used to solve "Knotty Nuclear Problems" , but actually computed firing tables for the White Sands missile range.BRL also had many firsts., EDVAC and ORDVAC Computers were very powerful military computers which replaced ENIAC. Around 1958/1959 BRL decided to build a very advanced Scientific Computer. BRLESC. (BRL Electronic Scientific Computer). This was a very expensive and powerful computer but it did contain vacuum tubes at the time when all commercial computers were switching to solid state devices. This computer was made obsolete by Solid State Technology.
BINAC
The next machine produced by the Eckert & Mauchly team was Binac, special-purpose computer, Only one was built. Binac embodied four important advances, however: it used serial instead of parallel logic; it was the first computer to be internally programmed; it was the first computer to use magnetic tape; and it was the first computer to use solid state elements. Internal programming eliminated the time-consuming and tedious task of changing a problem by connecting external cables.
In parallel-logic systems, if one wishes to add two 3 digit numbers, one provides three add circuits, one for each column. In a serial machine, the columns are added one at a time, sequentially. This arrangement eliminates many parts and, of course, when the number of parts goes down so does the cost.Binac's use of Magnetic tape was limited to small reels. Small as it was, however, this 2 inch reel was the forerunner of the complex tape input and storage systems.In part, Binac achieved the speed necessary to the successful operation of a serial machine by the use of crystal diodes instead of vacuum tubes for switches. All sequential machines really are giant switching networks. Vacuum tubes still were used for amplification, but this first use of crystal diodes, as long ago as 1948, foreshadowed today's all solid-state machines with their greatly increased speeds and greatly reduced size, power and cooling requirements, and costs. A solid state component uses the flow of electrons through a solid material.
After Binac, new developments came thick and fast. The memory utilized in Binac was mercury tank memory. The design of this storage device was based on the very simple fact that an electrical pulse could be converted to a sound pulse (by means of piezo-electric quartz crystal and that this sound crystal would travel at relative low speed through a body of mercury. When it came out the other end, it could be reconverted to an electrical pulse by another crystal, amplified, and sent back into the tank. The net result was that the "bit" of information kept circulating until such time until called for by the computers circuitry. Mercury Delay Memory was also utilized in the
One of the largest factors in the success of UNIVAC I was the revolutionary input-output equipment offered with it. All input to the computer and output from it was by means of magnetic tape. The magnetic tapes were prepared off-line by a Unityper and information from them was printed out (also offline) by a Uniprinter. A keyboard and a typewriter were also provided with UNIVAC I for getting information into and out of the computer, but these generally were used in the course of checking out programs and rarely during the actual computer run.The Uniservo I was for communication and intermediate storage between the input-output devices and the computer. The magnetic tape was recorded at 120 digits per inch and could move past the read-write heads at 100 inches per second. Since Mylar tape had not been invented and the other alternative was acetate film, (which was very unstable), Univac choose to use metallic tape. Uniservo used small tape reels because they each weighed 25 lbs, but were very reliable. Also vacuum buffering was not yet invented so the buffering technique was to use elaborate rubber bands.Before long, the Card-To-Tape Converter was added to the input-output array. It read punched cards and converted the data into pulses on magnetic tape ate the rate of 240 cards per minute. A single standard reel of tape could hold as many as 4000 punched cards. A new High Speed printer was introduced which read magnetic tape and printed at 600 lines per minute. Newer High-Speed Printers operated at about 720 lines per minute but technology at that time limited printer speeds to 720 line per minute.Improvement in Technology was an ongoing process. The Unityper II, occupied 2 cubic feet instead of 20. Besides costing less to begin width it costs less to maintain. Uniservo II tapes moved at the same speed as the Uniservo I tapes- 100 inches per second but they were effectively twice as fast because twice as much information was recorded per inch.
UNIVAC File Computer
Remington Rand, through its acquisitions of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) in February 1950 and Engineering Associates (ERA) in December 1951 became the leading (and for a brief time the only) computer vendor in the world. Remington Rand decided to market a medium -scale computer to be called the UNIVAC File Computer. As its name indicated the File Computer was intended to provide access to data files stores on magnetic drums. This was very unusual for that time. Most computers read in data records from punched cards, paper tape or magnetic tape, process them back out to cards or tape, but they had no provision for long term on-line storage of data. The original File Computer had a 1,070 word drum, a memory that had twelve 6-bit digits or characters per word. The computer performed decimal arithmetic on numbers represented in Excess-3(XS-3) code. In XS-3, each decimal digit was represented by a binary value three higher, that is, 0 by 000011, 1 by 000100, etc. There were also codes for letters and special characters, such as 0101100 for A, 010101 for B and so on. The 1070-word drum which had an average access time of 2.5 milliseconds, was for storage of data actually being worked on by the program. General storage data was provided by from one to ten 15,000 word drums, whose average access time was 17 milliseconds. It was possible to have a processor which did tape sorting and collating, separately from the central processor.Besides doing the usual sort of batch work, the File Computer could provide interactive access to the stored data via one to ten terminals, which were called "input-output devices", An input-output device consisted of an inquiry typewriter, a punched card unit(using either 80 or 90 column punched cards), a paper type unit, a printer, and an optional Magnetic Tape drive. The input-output devices could operate independently from the Central Processing complex and perform input-output operations while the processor was doing something else.The File Computer Model 1 was built in 1957. It has twenty words of core storage, a tiny amount, but enough to provide for some internal programming capability, It allowed for a combination of internal and plug board instructions in the same operation, There were 27 instructions in the internal instruction set, including the arithmetic, comparison, jumps, suppression of left zeros, test for input from I/O station, and transfer to the plug board. The plug board had 19 operations, one of which transfer of control to the program memory. The memory instructions were twelve-digits in length, the last three specified the instruction code, while the others comprised three three-digit storage addresses. A field upgrade was later available which replaced the main memory drum with 1740 words of core memory this upgrade increased the operating speed by a factor of 3.6.Eastern Airlines used a File Computer for their reservation system. In 1957 Eastern and the St. Paul engineering staff developed a terminal device, called an agent set, for use on the File Computer, which had a keyboard and push-button matrix for selection of the function to be performed. A demonstration of the agent set took place in August 1957, but the reservation system did not start running until September 1958. The system covered nine cities (Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Houston, New Orleans, New York-Newark, Philadelphia and Washington) and within two months was processing one transaction per second. Northwest Airlines started using this reservation system in November 1959 and Capitol Airlines followed in early 1960. Douglas Aircraft Company was the largest user of File Computers, with 7 installations. Other users of the File Computer included the C&P Telephone Co., Western Electric, Michigan Bell, First National City Bank, various Army and Marine Corp bases. (The photos above were taken by this writer in 1958 at Edgewood Army Chemical Center, Edgewood, Maryland)A series of development delays meant that the File Computers were delivered toward the end of the vacuum-tube generation of computer hardware. Transistor (second generation) computers began appearing in quantity in 1960 and 1961. These new Solid State computers made vacuum-tube computers such as the File Computer obsolete.
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