Notes on Milestones in the Information Age

Abacus

  • Computing aids include the abacus, an instrument for performing arithmetic by sliding counters along rods, wires, or lines.
  • The first abacus was probably developed in the Middle East more than 2,000 years ago.
  • In Chinese, Japanese, or Russian variants, counters move along rods or wires within a rectangular frame.

Abacus (continued) and Early Merchants’ Tools

  • Beginning in medieval Europe, merchants calculated by sliding wooden or metal counters along lines drawn in a wooden counting board.
  • The term “counter” evolved to refer both to the disk manipulated and to the place in a store where transactions occur.
  • The Margarita Philosophica (1503) by Gregor Reisch shows two calculating aids: a tablet (left) and a counting board (right).

Logarithm Tables

  • John Napier and Johannes Kepler published tables of logarithms; they saved time by allowing multiplication to be done via addition of logarithms.
  • Businesspeople used logarithm tables to compute interest and convert currencies.
  • Today, people who compute taxes by hand use tax tables to determine amounts owed.

Manual Calculations and Error Proneness

  • Even with abacuses and tables, manual calculation was slow, tedious, and error-prone.
  • Century-old mathematical tables often contained errors because entries were computed by hand and then typeset; mistakes could occur in either step.

STEP RECKONER

  • Blaise Pascal (1640) built a mechanical calculator to speed up summing long columns of numbers given by his father, a French tax collector.
  • Pascal’s calculator could add whole numbers containing up to six digits: up to 6 digits.
  • Inspired by Pascal, Gottfried Leibniz built a more sophisticated calculator, the Step Reckoner, which performed addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
  • The hand-cranked machines (Pascal’s and Leibniz’s) were not reliable and did not enjoy commercial success.

ARITHMETER

  • In the 19th century, advances in machine tools and mass production enabled practical calculating machines.
  • Frenchman Charles Thomas de Colmar used Leibniz’s stepped-drum gear mechanism to create the Arithmometer, the first commercially successful calculator.

Printing Calculator and Difference Engines

  • Many insurance firms bought Arithmometers to speed actuarial rate-table work.
  • Babbage’s full-scale Difference Engine efforts were unsuccessful.
  • Georg Scheutz and son Edvard built the world’s first printing calculator, able to calculate mathematical tables and print values onto molds.
  • The Dudley Observatory (Albany, NY) bought the Scheutz difference engine in 1856; with support from the US Nautical Almanac Office, astronomers used it to compute Mars motion and refraction of starlight.
  • Difference engines were never widely used; the technology was eclipsed by simpler, cheaper calculating machines.

Burroughs Adding Machine and Office Work

  • William Burroughs developed a practical adding machine in the late 1800s.
  • Burroughs distinguished itself by strong manufacturing and marketing, leading to industry leadership by the 1890s.
  • Calculating machines became entrenched in large American corporations by the turn of the century.

CALCULATOR and Deskilling of Bookkeeping

  • Adoption of mechanical calculators contributed to the de-skilling and feminization of bookkeeping.
  • Before calculators, offices were male-dominated; rapid manual sums were prized.
  • Calculator use made average workers productive; a 1909 Burroughs study found a clerk with a calculator was about six times faster than one hand-summing the same column.
  • Managers introduced calculators and replaced male bookkeepers with female workers, lowering wages.
  • Gender share in bookkeeping related occupations rose from 5.7 ext{\%} in 1880 to 38.5 ext{\%} in 1910.

POINT OF SALE SYSTEMS

  • Late 19th century storeowners faced accounting and embezzlement challenges as stores grew into departments.
  • Keeping accurate sales records was difficult when clerks could skim receipts for some sales.
  • While traveling in Europe in 1878, James Ritty observed a mechanical counter; a year later he and his brother John built the first cash register—an adding machine that could display values in dollars and cents.
  • Enhancements followed quickly, and by the early 1900s cash registers provided detailed sales records and other accounting functions.

INFORMATION SECURITY and Receipts

  • Cash registers made clerk embezzlement harder: the bell prevented surreptitious cash taking, ensuring every sale was rung up.
  • Printed logs allowed owners to compare cash on hand with sales receipts.

PUNCH CARDS and Early Data Processing

  • As organizations grew (late 19th century), they needed to handle larger data volumes.
  • The US Census Bureau automated data with Herman Hollerith’s punched-card machines, which stored information on punched cards rather than rolls of paper.
  • Cards could be sorted into groups, enabling subtotals by category.
  • Hollerith’s system dramatically sped the 1890 census: finished in two years versus eight years in 1880; automating the census saved about 5{,}000{,}000, roughly one-third of the Census Bureau’s annual budget.

PUNCH CARDS (continued) and Wider Adoption

  • Other data-intensive organizations adopted punched-card technology:
    • Railroads for improved accounting and billing frequency.
    • Retailers like Marshall Field’s for more sophisticated analyses of cash-register data.
    • Heavy industries (e.g., Pennsylvania Steel Company) for cost accounting on manufacturing.
  • The invention of sorters, tabulators, and other devices created a positive feedback loop, driving further information-processing innovations.

IBM Data Processing and the Punched-Card Era

  • IBM emerged as the corporate descendant of Hollerith’s company; Remington Rand was a major competitor.
  • Punched-card systems stored input data, intermediate results, and output data; in more complex systems, cards could store the program steps as well.
  • Early systems relied on human operators to move cards between machines; later systems used electrical connections to transfer outputs without human intervention.
  • Large data-processing users demanded new features to boost speed and capabilities, steering the market toward commercial electronic computers.

ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS: IBM and Holocaust

  • Some customers used data-processing equipment for nefarious purposes.
  • IBM’s German subsidiary Dehomag aided the Nazi regime: tabulating, sorting, collating, and alphabetizing data supported rapid censuses and asset seizure, confinement, and deportation to death camps.
  • Thomas J. Watson prioritized business opportunities in Germany after Hitler's rise, expanding Dehomag’s operations and building a new factory.

ENIAC and Early Electronic Computers

  • ENIAC development (1939–1941): John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry built the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC), the first computer with vacuum tubes, but it was not programmable.
  • John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert later designed an electronic programmable computer to speed artillery-table calculations; ENIAC was completed in 1946.
  • ENIAC’s speed was remarkable: a desk calculator would take about 60 seconds to compute a trajectory that ENIAC could compute in 30 seconds, i.e., ENIAC was about 2{,}400 imes faster than a person with a desk calculator.

ENIAC: Architectural Characteristics

  • All internal components were electronic, and the machine could be programmed to perform various computations.
  • Its program was not stored in memory but wired in from the outside, so reprogramming could take many days.

SMALL-SCALE EXPERIMENTAL MACHINE (SSEM) and Williams Tube

  • In 1946, a Moore School lecture series influenced EDVAC design.
  • British engineer F. C. Williams developed CRT storage for digital information after WWII.
  • In early 1948, the Manchester team built the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), the first operational computer with program and data stored in memory (the Williams Tube).

FERRANTI MARK 1 and UNIVAC

  • Ferranti Mark 1 (1951) was the world’s first commercial computer, a descendant of Manchester computer research.
  • Eckert and Mauchly formed the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation; after cost overruns, Remington Rand bought them out and delivered UNIVAC I to the US Census in 1951.

ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS: UNIVAC in Public Elections

  • In a public relations move, Remington Rand collaborated with CBS to use UNIVAC to predict the 1952 presidential election outcomes.
  • The event highlighted the difficulty of decision-making when computers yield unexpected results and the tension between computer outputs and human expectations.

HUMAN ERROR and Early Election Forecasts

  • Polls before the 1952 election suggested Adlai Stevenson would lead Eisenhower. Univar’s initial projection predicted a landslide for Eisenhower with a large margin.
  • CBS requested the engineers to adjust programming to align with pundits’ expectations, but the computer had actually been correct in predicting Eisenhower’s win by a margin of 442 electoral votes to 89; the official result was 442–89.

UNIVAC: Market Penetration

  • In the early 1950s, UNIVAC gained prominence as a symbol of computing; Remington Rand sold 46 UNIVAC systems to government agencies and large corporations.
  • Clients included the US Air Force, Army Map Service, Atomic Energy Commission, Navy, and major firms such as General Electric, Metropolitan Life, US Steel, DuPont, Franklin Life Insurance, Westinghouse, Sylvania Electric, and Consolidated Edison.

ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE and Early High-Level Languages

  • Early digital computers used 0/1 machine code; to simplify coding, assembly language was created for symbolic instruction representations.
  • One assembly instruction mapped to one machine instruction.
  • Frances Holberton (ENIAC programmer) developed a sort-merge generator for UNIVAC to automate sorting/merging file operations (1951).
  • Grace Murray Hopper built the A-0 system to automate linking subroutines into complete machine code.

FORTRAN and the Rise of Compilers

  • John Backus led IBM’s effort to create FORTRAN (Formula Translating System) for scientific computing; first version completed in 1957.
  • FORTRAN compilers produced high-quality code; programs could be 5 to 20 times faster to write than in assembly language.
  • FORTRAN and other manufacturers’ compilers helped FORTRAN become an international standard.

COBOL and Business-Oriented Languages

  • Grace Hopper developed FLOW-MATIC (an English-like language) for UNIVAC; later, other manufacturers created their own languages.
  • To ensure widespread adoption, the US Department of Defense convened a committee in 1959 to define a common business-oriented language.
  • COBOL specification emerged, and defense contracts required COBOL support, driving its adoption.

BASIC and Time-Sharing

  • In the early 1960s, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth developed DTSS (Dartmouth Time-Sharing System) to allow multiple users to edit/run programs simultaneously.
  • BASIC emerged as a simple, easy-to-learn language to teach programming and broaden access to computing;
    many educational institutions adopted Dartmouth BASIC.
  • Manufacturers developed their own BASIC dialects.

TRANSISTOR and RISE OF MICROELECTRONICS

  • Postwar, Bell Labs and AT&T advanced semiconductor technology; transistor was invented in 1948.
  • Bell Labs’ transistor provided a replacement for vacuum tubes, reducing size, power, and heat.

INTEGRATED CIRCUIT (IC)

  • Shockley and colleagues founded Shockley Semiconductor; eight engineers left to found Fairchild Semiconductor (the Traitorous Eight).
  • Texas Instruments pursued the IC; both Fairchild and TI are credited with independently inventing the integrated circuit.

BALLISTIC MISSILES, Moore’s Law, and the IC Era

  • The Cold War spurred IC development, notably for Minuteman II guidance computers; this program consumed about 20 ext{\%} of IC sales from 1962–1965.
  • Gordon Moore (1965) observed that the number of transistors on an IC doubles approximately every two years, a trend now known as Moore’s Law.
  • This acceleration led to exponential improvements in performance and cost-effectiveness.

MAINFRAME Era and System/360

  • The 1960s marked the mainframe era, with centralized data processing for large organizations.
  • IBM System/360 (1964) introduced 19 compatible computers with varying speed/memory, software-compatible to upgrade without rewriting applications.
  • Software compatibility became increasingly important as organizations invested more in software.

INTEL and the Microprocessor Revolution

  • In 1968, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore left Fairchild to found Intel.
  • The 4004 microprocessor (released around 1971–1972) was Intel’s first general-purpose microprocessor, a 1/8-inch × 1/6-inch chip containing about 2{,}300 transistors.
  • The 4004’s power was comparable to the ENIAC in a tiny package, illustrating the dramatic rise of microelectronics.

MICROPROCESSORS and Everyday Computing

  • Microprocessors enabled integration of computers into everyday devices (smartphones, streaming devices, smart thermostats, etc.).
  • The most high-profile use remains personal computers.

MICROSOFT and the Altair BASIC Era

  • In 1975, the Homebrew Computer Club (HCC) popularized hobbyist computing; MITS shipped the Altair 8800.
  • Gates and Allen created BASIC for Altair; Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists arguing that most Altair owners hadn’t purchased BASIC, highlighting software theft concerns.
  • Despite controversy, innovation continued unabated.

APPLE and the Personal-Computer Revolution

  • Steve Wozniak, then at HP, built a more capable machine (Apple I); Jobs partnered with him to form Apple.
  • They raised 1{,}300 by selling Jobs’s VW van and Wozniak’s calculator, launching Apple Computer.
  • Apple I sold modestly; Apple II became one of the most popular early personal computers.

APPLICATIONS and Spreadsheet Revolution

  • By late 1970s, personal computers spread to businesses.
  • A key development was the spreadsheet program Visicalc (1979) by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston for the Apple II; it significantly boosted business adoption.
  • Visicalc’s productivity gains helped drive Apple II sales.

PCs and Open Architectures

  • The IBM PC (1981) popularized personal computing in business.
  • IBM chose an open architecture and off-the-shelf components; clones emerged from other manufacturers.
  • IBM licensed DOS from Microsoft (near-zero cost to IBM), while Microsoft earned royalties on PC-compatible machines; PC market share grew to over 80\%\% (more than 80%) for PC-compatible systems.

COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING: Telegraphs and Early Networks

  • In the early 19th century, telegraphy lagged European advances; semaphore-based optical telegraphs in Europe transmitted at ~350\text{ mph} under clear conditions.
  • Congress funded a telegraph between New York and New Orleans in 1837; Samuel Morse proposed a practical electrical telegraph.

VOLTAIC BATTERIES and Early Power

  • Amber (electrically charges when rubbed) demonstrated static electricity ~2600 years ago.
  • Alessandro Volta created the first battery in 1799 by generating chemical electricity using dissimilar metals in acid; the Voltaic battery produced orders of magnitude more power than amber friction.

TELEGRAPH: Electromagnetic Signaling

  • Joseph Henry demonstrated telegraph operation in 1830 by wiring a long line with a battery, electromagnet, pivoting bar, and bell to produce a series of rings.
  • Samuel Morse patented the telegraph in 1837 and secured a government appropriation (US Congress) for a 40-mile line in 1843–1844; the first telegraph message used was a Bible verse: “What hath God wrought?”

EMERGENCY SERVICES and Public Safety Networks

  • The first transcontinental telegraph completed in 1861; the Pony Express ended.
  • By 1870, fire-alarm telegraphs were in use in about 75 major US cities; NYC alone had around 600 fire-alarm telegraphs.

HARMONIC TELEGRAPH and the Telephone Prelude

  • Bell’s harmonic telegraph assigned distinct musical notes to different messages, enabling simultaneous transmission by tuning receivers to corresponding frequencies.
  • The human voice’s multiple frequencies suggested transmitting speech over wires.

TELEPHONE Revolution

  • Bell and Watson achieved electronic speech transmission in 1876 and commercialized telephony soon after.
  • Early telephones mainly served businesses; by the 1890s, home telephones became common as patents expired.
  • The private- versus public-life boundary blurred as homes gained phones, creating interruptions and new social dynamics.

ONLINE COMMUNITIES and Privacy Concerns

  • The telephone raised privacy concerns; early reports of eavesdropping (1877 NYT) suggested that confidentiality could be compromised.
  • Party-line service enabled rural communities to share lines and engage in social exchange.

TYPEWRITER and Teletype

  • The first typewriter was patented by Americans Sholes, Glidden, and Soule in the 1870s.
  • Remington & Sons produced the first commercial typewriter in late 1873.
  • Teletype experiments (1908) allowed messages to be printed over telegraph lines; teletype transmission became common in newsrooms and stock markets in the 1920s.

RADIO and Early Wireless Communication

  • Maxwell’s theory predicted electromagnetic waves and their relation to light; Hertz confirmed electromagnetic waves in 1885.
  • Marconi demonstrated radio transmission in 1895 and founded the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company to promote wireless telegraphy.

RADIO ENTERTAINMENT and Broadcast Culture

  • David Sarnoff helped popularize radio as an entertainment medium; his Wanamaker wireless station relayed Titanic sinking news in 1912.
  • The War of the Worlds broadcast (October 30, 1938) by Orson Welles caused public panic among listeners who believed the fiction was real.

TELEVISION and Early Transmission

  • Optical mechanical television (Nipkow) originated in 1884; the first fully electronic television transmission occurred in 1927 by Philo Farnsworth.
  • Televisions became common after 1939 World’s Fair; sets dropped in price in the 1950s, expanding household adoption.

REMOTE ACCESS and Early Networking

  • George Stibitz (Bell Labs) built a binary adder with relays and created the Complex Number Calculator; he connected a teletype as an I/O device to enable remote usage.
  • In 1940, Stibitz demonstrated remote computation from Dartmouth College to New York City via teletype and networked calculator.

ARPA, Licklider, and the Vision of a Galactic Network

  • Sputnik spurred DoD funding and the ARPA program.
  • J. C. R. Licklider envisioned a galactic network to share programs and data among universities.
  • ARPANET emerged as a distributed, open-architecture network concept, emphasizing interoperability and decentralized control.

PACKET-SWITCHED NETWORKING and ARPANET

  • Packet-switching emerged as a design alternative to circuit-switched networks (1961–1967), championed by Davies (NPL), Baran (RAND), and Kleinrock (MIT).
  • ARPANET (1967) pioneered decentralized routing to prevent single points of failure.
  • IMPs (Interface Message Processors) were deployed by BBN (Boston) to connect universities; first four IMPs delivered in 1969 to UCLA, SRI, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah.

EMAIL and Early Network Applications

  • The first email software for ARPANET appeared in March 1972 (Ray Tomlinson, BBN).
  • A later killer app for ARPANET was an email utility enabling listing, reading, replying, forwarding, and saving messages.
  • Email quickly became the most popular network application.

INTERNET and Open Architecture Networking

  • Open architecture networking enabled by TCP/IP: Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed the suite that supports diverse networks.
  • TCP divides messages into packets; IP routes packets through interconnected networks.
  • The Internet is a network of networks using TCP/IP; January 1, 1983 is often cited as the Internet’s birth date when ARPANET hosts switched to TCP/IP.

BROADBAND and Modern Connectivity

  • Broadband denotes high-speed Internet connections enabling large-file transfers (images, music, video).
  • World broadband leaders:
    • South Korea: 28.6\,\text{Mbps}
    • Norway: 23.5\,\text{Mbps}
    • Sweden: 22.5\,\text{Mbps}
  • United States: 18.7\,\text{Mbps}$$ (ranked 10th in the world)

WIRELESS NETWORKS and the Mobile Era

  • Cell phones emerged from Motorola’s 1973 demonstration, initially large and heavy (~2.5 pounds).
  • Advances in ICs and related tech drastically shrank devices while expanding capabilities (text, email, Internet access).

CLOUD COMPUTING

  • Cloud computing refers to using remote computing resources accessed via the Internet.
  • Breakthroughs enabling cloud computing include:
    • High-speed networks
    • High-performance, low-cost microprocessors
    • Low-cost storage devices
    • Virtualization software enabling a single physical computer to emulate many virtual devices

STORAGE and Writing Systems Across Time

  • Writing systems include logography (characters represent words), syllabaries (characters represent syllables), and alphabets (characters represent phonemes).
  • The Greeks developed the first true alphabet (~750 BCE), representing vowels and consonants; the English alphabet derives from the Greek alphabet.

PAPER CODEX and Ancient Storage Technologies

  • Papyrus scrolls were wrapped around wooden rods for storage and preservation, but ends tended to detach.
  • The codex (rectangular pages sewn on one side) offered greater durability and easier navigation.

GUTENBERG BIBLE and Movable Type

  • After the fall of the Roman Empire, Irish monks preserved culture via codices; early printing used wooden blocks.
  • Johannes Gutenberg’s movable metal type (completed 1455 on the 42-Line Bible) enabled mass printing and reduced costs, increasing literacy.

NEWSPAPER and the Free Press

  • The first English-language newspaper appeared in Britain in the 1600s.
  • Licensing acts constrained press control in the 17th century; Parliament’s non-renewal of the Licensing Act in 1695 opened the path to a free press.
  • In America, newspapers helped unify the colonies and shaped public opinion toward independence.

GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE (GUI) and Early Interfaces

  • The era of punch-card job submissions and slow outputs inspired requests for direct interaction with computers.
  • Douglas Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center developed NLS (oNLine System) with a mouse, windows, email, and live videoconferencing; Engelbart’s demo in 1968 became famous as the mother of all demos.
  • Paul Saffo characterized the demo as “like a UFO landing on the White House lawn.”

Alan Kay, PARC, and the GUI Revolution

  • Alan Kay joined Xerox PARC and helped develop the Alto, a single-user minicomputer with a bitmapped display, keyboard, and mouse.
  • Kay helped pioneer a graphical user interface driven by point-and-click and drag operations.
  • Ethernet networking emerged at PARC as a standard linking Altos.

APPLE MACINTOSH and GUI Proliferation

  • Apple’s collaboration with Xerox PARC led to Lisa (prototype) and later the Macintosh (1984), with a GUI at a modest price and strong market impact.
  • Lisa was $10,000 and slow/poorly received; Macintosh launched at $2,495, and sold about 300,000 in its first year.

WINDOWS and GUI Dominance

  • In the 1980s, IBM, VisiCorp, and Microsoft offered GUI options for PC-compatible systems, but Macintosh GUI remained superior for a time.
  • Microsoft released Windows 3.0 in May 1990; about 10 million copies were sold, contributing to a near-monopoly on the GUI market.

WEB BROWSER and the World Wide Web

  • Berners-Lee built the first Web browser on a NeXT computer (WorldWideWeb) and released it to CERN in 1991.
  • Mosaic (developed at UIUC) became the first widely used browser.
  • Modern browsers include Chrome, Safari, UC, Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer.

SEARCH ENGINES and PageRank

  • A search engine accepts user-entered keywords and returns primarily matching documents.
  • Google indexes hundreds of billions of pages; Google Books allows full-text search of millions of books.
  • PageRank is a key algorithm that orders results based on the number and quality of links from other sites, rather than keyword frequency alone.

CLOUD STORAGE

  • Cloud storage stores data remotely on servers accessible via the Internet, as opposed to local hard drives.
  • The concept of the cloud predates popular services but gained prominence with user-friendly cloud storage options such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, iCloud, Amazon Drive, Mega, and pCloud.