... and
economical way of using a computer.
A key factor was the development of disk storage that offered rapid
and direct access to large amounts of data. IBM had pioneered the use
of disk storage with RAMAC ... played a
crucial role by providing a market. The ‘‘advanced’’ Minuteman was a
brand-new missile wrapped around an existing airframe. Autonetics, the
division of North...
... formal and
serious than those on Usenet, although they also had a wide range. After
about a decade and a half of parallel operations, all three of these
streams blended into a community of news, ... A few programs were announced at the
same time: a ‘‘paint’’ (drawing) program, based on work done at Xerox-
PARC on a Data General Nova, and a word processor that came close...
... Corporation, 54 55 ,
157 – 158
as customer for UNIVAC, 30, 32–33
GE-Calma, 281
GE 6 35 computer, 155
OARAC, 55
time-sharing system, 155 , 203–204,
2 35, 250
General Mills Corporation, 53
Generations, of ... originated with Donald Davies of the
National Physical Laboratory in the U.K. See Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘‘Data
Communications at the National Physical Laboratory (19 65 19 7...
... information-handling
machines, played. Information or ‘‘intelligence’’ has been a crucial
part of all warfare, but as a means to an end. In the Cold War it
became an end in itself. This was a war of code-breaking, ... stated it in a form that gave it great force. Von Neumann’s
international reputation as a mathematician also gave the idea more
clout than it might have had coming...
... carried
Computing Comes of Age, 1 956 –1964 71
quality of ‘‘random access’’: that any piece of data was as accessible as
any other, in contrast to the sequential retrieval of a datum from a deck
of ... Charles Babbage Institute,
University of Minnesota.)
Computing Comes of Age, 1 956 –1964 53
was not as large as GE but in 1 955 it had over twice the annual sales of
I...
... same program (with a few minor changes)
ran on a UNIVAC II and an RCA 50 1. Whether COBOL was well
designed and capable is still a matter of debate, however.
Part of COBOL’s ancestry can be traced ... in chapter 7.
Sorting Data
Regardless of what level of programming language they used, all
commercial and many scientific installations had to contend with an
activity that was int...
... controlled, managed, and channeled the chaos of
technical innovation into market dominance. Central to smooth opera-
tions at IBM was a character from a best-seller from that era, The
Organization Man, ... series gave the
equivalent of ten decimal digits. That was adequate for most applica-
tions, but many assumed that customers would not want a machine that
could not handle at leas...
... from a company that made
oscilloscopes.
By 1970 the first of a line of dramatically cheaper and smaller
calculators appeared that used integrated circuits.
28
They were about
the size of a paperback ... to
scroll a pixel at a time, rather than a line at a time. There was no
practical reason to have this feature, and it failed to catch on with other
terminal displays, but it...
... help of others at NCSA, Mosaic was rewritten to run on
Windows-based machines and Macintoshes as well as workstations. As a
product of a government-funded laboratory, Mosaic was made available
free ... body of software comparable to, or
even better than, what it took large teams of people to create in the
commercial or academic world.
As important as that programming was, just as...
... communication to the author.
54 . Sammet, Programming Languages, 2 05 2 15; Bob Rosin, personal communica-
tion, 23 June 19 95.
55 . The PL=I programming language, described later, was also a part of this
unifying ... only a chip supplier.
29. National Museum of American History, calculator collections. A Bowmar was
even mentioned in the hit Broadway play ‘‘Same Time Next Year,’’...