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Computer History 1981
IBM introduced its PC, igniting a fast
growth of the personal computer market. The first PC ran on a 4.77 MHz
Intel 8088 microprocessor and used Microsoft´s MS-DOS operating system.
Adam Osborne completed the first portable
computer, the Osborne I, which weighed 24 pounds and cost $1,795. The
price made the machine especially attractive, as it included software
worth about $1,500. The machine featured a 5-inch display, 64 kilobytes
of memory, a modem, and two 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drives.
In April 1981, Byte Magazine Editor in Chief Chris Morgan mentioned the Osborne I in an article on "Future Trends in Personal Computing." He wrote: "I recently had an opportunity to see the Osborne I in action. I was impressed with it´s compactness: it will fit under an airplane seat. (Adam Osborne is currently seeking approval from the FAA to operate the unit on board a plane.) One quibble: the screen may be too small for some people´s taste."
Adam Osborne completed the first portable
computer, the Osborne I, which weighed 24 pounds and cost $1,795. The
price made the machine especially attractive, as it included software
worth about $1,500. The machine featured a 5-inch display, 64 kilobytes
of memory, a modem, and two 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drives.In April 1981, Byte Magazine Editor in Chief Chris Morgan mentioned the Osborne I in an article on "Future Trends in Personal Computing." He wrote: "I recently had an opportunity to see the Osborne I in action. I was impressed with it´s compactness: it will fit under an airplane seat. (Adam Osborne is currently seeking approval from the FAA to operate the unit on board a plane.) One quibble: the screen may be too small for some people´s taste."
Computer History 1965
Digital
Equipment Corp. introduced the PDP-8, the first commercially successful
minicomputer. The PDP-8 sold for $18,000, one-fifth the price of a
small IBM 360 mainframe. The speed, small size, and reasonable cost
enabled the PDP-8 to go into thousands of manufacturing plants, small
businesses, and scientific laboratories.
Source: - www.computerhistory.org
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Computer History 1964
IBM
announced the System/360, a family of six mutually compatible computers
and 40 peripherals that could work together. The initial investment of
$5 billion was quickly returned as orders for the system climbed to
1,000 per month within two years. At the time IBM released the
System/360, the company was making a transition from discrete
transistors to integrated circuits, and its major source of revenue
moved from punched-card equipment to electronic computer systems.
Computer History 1961
According to Datamation magazine, IBM had
an 81.2-percent share of the computer market in 1961, the year in which
it introduced the 1400 Series. The 1401 mainframe, the first in the
series, replaced the vacuum tube with smaller, more reliable transistors
and used a magnetic core memory.Demand called for more than 12,000 of the 1401 computers, and the machine´s success made a strong case for using general-purpose computers rather than specialized systems.
Source: - www.computerhistory.org
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Computer History 1959
IBM´s
7000 series mainframes were the company´s first transistorized
computers. At the top of the line of computers — all of which emerged
significantly faster and more dependable than vacuum tube machines — sat
the 7030, also known as the "Stretch." Nine of the computers, which
featured a 64-bit word and other innovations, were sold to national
laboratories and other scientific users. L. R. Johnson first used the
term "architecture" in describing the Stretch.
Source: - www.computerhistory.org
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Computer History 1954
The
IBM 650 magnetic drum calculator established itself as the first
mass-produced computer, with the company selling 450 in one year.
Spinning at 12,500 rpm, the 650´s magnetic data-storage drum allowed
much faster access to stored material than drum memory machines.
Source: - www.computerhistory.org
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Computer History 1953
IBM
shipped its first electronic computer, the 701. During three years of
production, IBM sold 19 machines to research laboratories, aircraft
companies, and the federal government.
Source: - www.computerhistory.org
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Computer History 1951
MIT´s
Whirlwind debuted on Edward R. Murrow´s "See It Now" television series.
Project director Jay Forrester described the computer as a "reliable
operating system," running 35 hours a week at 90-percent utility using
an electrostatic tube memory.Start of project: 1945
Completed:1951
England´s first commercial computer, the
Lyons Electronic Office, solved clerical problems. The president of
Lyons Tea Co. had the computer, modeled after the EDSAC, built to solve
the problem of daily scheduling production and delivery of cakes to the
Lyons tea shops. After the success of the first LEO, Lyons went into
business manufacturing computers to meet the growing need for data
processing systems.Tag :
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Computer History 1948
IBM´s Selective Sequence Electronic
Calculator computed scientific data in public display near the company´s
Manhattan headquarters. Before its decommissioning in 1952, the SSEC
produced the moon-position tables used for plotting the course of the
1969 Apollo flight to the moon. Speed - 50 multiplications per second
Input/output: cards, punched tape
Memory type: punched tape, vacuum tubes, relays
Technology: 20,000 relays, 12,500 vacuum tubes
Floor space: 25 feet by 40 feet
Project leader: Wallace Eckert
Source: - www.computerhistory.org
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Computer History 1944
Harvard Mark-1 is completed. Conceived by
Harvard professor Howard Aiken, and designed and built by IBM, the
Harvard Mark-1 was a room-sized, relay-based calculator. The machine had
a fifty-foot long camshaft that synchronized the machine’s thousands of
component parts. The Mark-1 was used to produce mathematical tables but
was soon superseded by stored program computers.
The
first Colossus is operational at Bletchley Park. Designed by British
engineer Tommy Flowers, the Colossus was designed to break the complex
Lorenz ciphers used by the Nazis during WWII. A total of ten Colossi
were delivered to Bletchley, each using 1,500 vacuum tubes and a series
of pulleys transported continuous rolls of punched paper tape containing
possible solutions to a particular code. Colossus reduced the time to
break Lorenz messages from weeks to hours. The machine’s existence was
not made public until the 1970s.
Source: - www.computerhistory.org
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