The Comparative Analysis Of The History Of The Computer Science And The Computer Engineering In The USA And Ukraine

The Comparative Analysis Of The History Of The Computer Science And The

Computer Engineering In The USA And Ukraine.

HOWARD H. AIKEN AND THE COMPUTER

Howard Aiken's contributions to the development of the computer -notably

the Harvard Mark I (IBM ASSC) machine, and its successor the Mark II - are

often excluded from the mainstream history of computers on two

technicalities. The first is that Mark I and Mark II were electro-

mechanical rather than electronic; the second one is that Aiken was never

convinced that computer programs should be treated as data in what has come

to be known as the von Neumann concept, or the stored program.

It is not proposed to discuss here the origins and significance of the

stored program. Nor I wish to deal with the related problem of whether the

machines before the stored program were or were not “computers”. This

subject is complicated by the confusion in actual names given to machines.

For example, the ENIAC, which did not incorporate a stored program, was

officially named a computer: Electronic Numeral Integrator And Computer.

But the first stored-program machine to be put into regular operation was

Maurice Wiles' EDSAC: Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator. It

seems to be rather senseless to deny many truly significant innovations (by

H.H.Aiken and by Eckert and Mauchly), which played an important role in the

history of computers, on the arbitrary ground that they did not incorporate

the stored-program concept. Additionally, in the case of Aiken, it is

significant that there is a current computer technology that does not

incorporate the stored programs and that is designated as (at least by

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS®) as “Harvard architecture”, though, it should more

properly be called “Aiken architecture”. In this technology the program is

fix and not subject to any alteration save by intent - as in some computers

used for telephone switching and in ROM.

OPERATION OF THE ENIAC.

Aiken was a visionary, a man ahead of his times. Grace Hopper and others

remember his prediction in the late 1940s, even before the vacuum tube had

been wholly replaced by the transistor, that the time would come when a

machine even more powerful than the giant machines of those days could be

fitted into a space as small as a shoe box.

Some weeks before his death Aiken had made another prediction. He pointed

out that hardware considerations alone did not give a true picture of

computer costs. As hardware has become cheaper, software has been apt to

get more expensive. And then he gave us his final prediction: “The time

will come”, he said, “when manufacturers will gave away hardware in order

to sell software”. Time alone will tell whether or not this was his final

look ahead into the future.

DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTERS IN THE USA

In the early 1960s, when computers were hulking mainframes that took up

entire rooms, engineers were already toying with the then - extravagant

notion of building a computer intended for the sole use of one person. by

the early 1970s, researches at Xerox's Polo Alto Research Center (Xerox

PARC) had realized that the pace of improvement in the technology of

semiconductors - the chips of silicon that are the building blocks of

present-day electronics - meant that sooner or later the PC would be

extravagant no longer. They foresaw that computing power would someday be

so cheap that engineers would be able to afford to devote a great deal of

it simply to making non-technical people more comfortable with these new

information - handling tools. in their labs, they developed or refined much

of what constitutes PCs today, from “mouse” pointing devices to software

“windows”.

Although the work at Xerox PARC was crucial, it was not the spark that took

PCs out of the hands of experts and into the popular imagination. That

happened inauspiciously in January 1975, when the magazine Popular

Electronics put a new kit for hobbyists, called the Altair, on its cover.

for the first time, anybody with $400 and a soldering iron could buy and

assemble his own computer. The Altair inspired Steve Wosniak and Steve Jobs

to build the first Apple computer, and a young college dropout named Bill

Gates to write software for it. Meanwhile. the person who deserves the

credit for inventing the Altair, an engineer named Ed Roberts, left the

industry he had spawned to go to medical school. Now he is a doctor in

small town in central Georgia.

To this day, researchers at Xerox and elsewhere pooh-pooh the Altair as too

primitive to have made use of the technology they felt was needed to bring

PCs to the masses. In a sense, they are right. The Altair incorporated one

of the first single-chip microprocessor - a semiconductor chip, that

contained all the basic circuits needed to do calculations - called the

Intel 8080. Although the 8080 was advanced for its time, it was far too

slow to support the mouse, windows, and elaborate software Xerox had

developed. Indeed, it wasn't until 1984, when Apple Computer's Macintosh

burst onto the scene, that PCs were powerful enough to fulfill the original

vision of researchers. “The kind of computing that people are trying to do

today is just what we made at PARC in the early 1970s,” says Alan Kay, a

former Xerox researcher who jumped to Apple in the early 1980s.

MACINTOSH PERFORMA 6200/6300

Researchers today are proceeding in the same spirit that motivated Kay and

his Xerox PARC colleagues in the 1970s: to make information more accessible

to ordinary people. But a look into today's research labs reveals very

little that resembles what we think of now as a PC. For one thing,

researchers seem eager to abandon the keyboard and monitor that are the

PC's trademarks. Instead they are trying to devise PCs with interpretive

powers that are more humanlike - PCs that can hear you and see you, can

tell when you're in a bad mood and know to ask questions when they don't

understand something.

It is impossible to predict the invention that, like the Altair,

crystallize new approaches in a way that captures people's imagination.

Top 20 computer systems

From soldering irons to SparcStations, from MITS to Macintosh, personal

computers have evolved from do-it-yourself kits for electronic hobbyists

into machines that practically leap out of the box and set themselves up.

What enabled them to get from there to here? Innovation and determination.

Here are top 20 systems that made that rapid evolution possible.

MITS Altair 8800

There once was a time when you could buy a top-of-the-line computer for

$395. The only catch was that you had to build it yourself. Although the

Altair 8800 wasn't actually the first personal computer (Scelbi Computer

Consulting`s 8008-based Scelbi-8H kit probably took that honor in 1973), it

grabbed attention. MITS sold 2000 of them in 1975 - more than any single

computer before it.

Based on Intel`s 8-bit 8080 processor, the Altair 8800 kit included 256

bytes of memory (upgradable, of course) and a toggle-switch-and-LED front

panel. For amenities such as keyboard, video terminals, and storage

devices, you had to go to one of the companies that sprang up to support

the Altair with expansion cards. In 1975, MITS offered 4- and 8-KB Altair

versions of BASIC, the first product developed by Bill Gates` and Paul

Allen`s new company, Microsoft.

If the personal computer hobbyists movement was simmering, 1975 saw it come

to a boil with the introduction of the Altair 8800.

Apple II

Those of you who think of the IBM PC as the quintessential business

computers may be in for a surprise: The Apple II (together with VisiCalc)

was what really made people to look at personal computers as business

tools, not just toys.

The Apple II debuted at the first West Coast Computer Fair in San Francisco

in 1977. With built-in keyboard, graphics display, eight readily accessible

expansion slots, and BASIC built-into ROM, the Apple II was actually easy

to use. Some of its innovations, like built-in high-resolution color

graphics and a high-level language with graphics commands, are still

extraordinary features in desk top machines.

With a 6502 CPU, 16 KB of RAM, a 16-KB ROM, a cassette interface that never

really worked well (most Apple It ended up with the floppy drive the was

announced in 1978), and color graphics, the Apple II sold for $1298.

Commondore PET

Also introduced at the first West Coast Computer Fair, Commondore`s PET

(Personal Electronic Transactor) started a long line of expensive personal

computers that brought computers to the masses. (The VIC-20 that followed

was the first computer to sell 1 million units, and the Commondore 64 after

that was the first to offer a whopping 64 KB of memory.)

The keyboard and small monochrome display both fit in the same one-piece

unit. Like the Apple II, the PET ran on MOS Technology's 6502. Its $795

price, key to the Pet's popularity supplied only 4 KB of RAM but included a

built-in cassette tape drive for data storage and 8-KB version of Microsoft

BASIC in its 14-KB ROM.

Radio Shack TRS-80

Remember the Trash 80? Sold at local Radio Shack stores in your choice of

color (Mercedes Silver), the TRS-80 was the first ready-to-go computer to

use Zilog`s Z80 processor.

The base unit was essentially a thick keyboard with 4 KB of RAM and 4 KB of

ROM (which included BASIC). An optional expansion box that connected by

ribbon cable allowed for memory expansion. A Pink Pearl eraser was standard

equipment to keep those ribbon cable connections clean.

Much of the first software for this system was distributed on

audiocassettes played in from Radio Shack cassette recorders.

Osborne 1 Portable

By the end of the 1970s, garage start-ups were pass. Fortunately there were

other entrepreneurial possibilities. Take Adam Osborne, for example. He

sold Osborne Books to McGraw-Hill and started Osborne Computer. Its first

product, the 24-pound Osborne 1 Portable, boasted a low price of $1795.

More important, Osborne established the practice of bundling software - in

spades. The Osborne 1 came with nearly $1500 worth of programs: WordStar,

SuperCalc, BASIC, and a slew of CP/M utilities.

Business was looking good until Osborne preannounced its next version while

sitting on a warehouse full of Osborne 1S. Oops. Reorganization under

Chapter 11 followed soon thereafter.

Xerox Star

This is the system that launched a thousand innovations in 1981. The work

of some of the best people at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) went

into it. Several of these - the mouse and a desktop GUI with icons - showed

up two years later in Apple`s Lisa and Macintosh computers. The Star wasn't

what you would call a commercial success, however. The main problem seemed

to be how much it cost. It would be nice to believe that someone shifted a

decimal point somewhere: The pricing started at $50,000.

IBM PC

Irony of ironies that someone at mainframe-centric IBM recognized the

business potential in personal computers. The result was in 1981 landmark

announcement of the IBM PC. Thanks to an open architecture, IBM's clout,

and Lotus 1-2-3 (announced one year later), the PC and its progeny made

business micros legitimate and transformed the personal computer world.

The PC used Intel`s 16-bit 8088, and for $3000, it came with 64 KB of RAM

and a 51/4-inch floppy drive. The printer adapter and monochrome monitor

were extras, as was the color graphics adapter.

Compaq Portable

Compaq's Portable almost single-handedly created the PC clone market.

Although that was about all you could do with it single-handedly - it

weighed a ton. Columbia Data Products just preceded Compaq that year with

the first true IBM PC clone but didn't survive. It was Compaq's quickly

gained reputation for engineering and quality, and its essentially 100

percent IBM compatibility (reverse-engineering, of course), that

legitimized the clone market. But was it really designed on a napkin?

Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100

Years before PC-compatible subnotebook computers, Radio Shack came out with

a book-size portable with a combination of features, battery life, weight,

and price that is still unbeatable. (Of course, the Z80-based Model 100

didn't have to run Windows.)

The $800 Model 100 had only an 8-row by 40-column reflective LCD (large at

the time) but supplied ROM-based applications (including text editor,

communications program, and BASIC interpreter), a built-in modem, I/O

ports, nonvolatile RAM, and a great keyboard. Wieghing under 4 pounds, and

with a battery life measured in weeks (on four AA batteries), the Model 100

quickly became the first popular laptop, especially among journalists.

With its battery-backed RAM, the Model 100 was always in standby mode,

ready to take notes, write a report, or go on-line. NEC`s PC 8201 was

essentially the same Kyocera-manufectured system.

Apple Macintosh

Whether you saw it as a seductive invitation to personal computing or a cop-

out to wimps who were afraid of a command line, Apple`s Macintosh and its

GUI generated even more excitement than the IBM PC. Apple`s R&D people were

inspired by critical ideas from Xerox PARK (and practiced on Apple`s Lisa)

but added many of their own ideas to create a polished product that changed

the way people use computers.

The original Macintosh used Motorola's 16-bit 68000 microprocessor. At

$2495, the system offered a built-in-high-resolution monochrome display,

the Mac OS, and a single-button mouse. With only 128 KB of RAM, the Mac was

underpowered at first. But Apple included some key applications that made

the Macintosh immediately useful. (It was MacPaint that finally showed

people what a mouse is good for.)

IBM AT

George Orwell didn't foresee the AT in 1984. Maybe it was because Big Blue,

not Big Brother, was playing its cards close to its chest. The IBM AT set

new standards for performance and storage capacity. Intel`s blazingly fast

286 CPU running at 6 MHz and 16-bit bus structure gave the AT several times

the performance of previous IBM systems. Hard drive capacity doubled from

10 MB to 20 MB (41 MB if you installed two drives - just donut ask how they

did the math), and the cost per megabyte dropped dramatically.

New 16-bit expansion slots meant new (and faster) expansion cards but

maintained downward compatibility with old 8-bit cards. These hardware

changes and new high-density 1.2-MB floppy drives meant a new version of PC-

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