Computer Science:
A Brief History
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Here's a brief history of "computer science". Really it's a mix of hardware
and software innovations over the years. This is from the back cover of
Operating Systems Concepts, 4th Ed. by Silberschatz and Galvin.
- 1834: Babbage/Lovelace design "Analytical Engine"
- 1854: Bool published "Laws of Thought" (Boolean Algebra and logic)
- 1928: ENIGMA coding machine, Germany
- 1930: Model 1, electromechanical computer, Bell Labs
- 1938: COLOSSUS, Alan Turing primitive computer
- 1941: Electromechanical calculator,Korad Zuse, Austria, 64 word memory,
3 secs multiplication.
- 1944: Mark I, Electromechanical computer, Howard Aiken
- 1945: ENIAC, Electrial Numerical Integrator and Computer,
J.W. Mauchly/J.P. Eckert.
- 1948: 1st transistor, Bell Labs
- 1949: EDVAC, built by Alan Turing, acoustic memory storage tubes,
oscilloscope display, 1st library of subroutines * 1st Assembly Language for
UNIVAC I
- 1951: EDVAC, operational, built by John von Neumann and team
- 1952: 1st commercial compiler * Microprogramming announced by Maurice Wilkes
- 1954: UNIVAC I, 1st computer sold to U.S. Defense Dept. (built at Harvard)
* MATH_MATIC, 1st compiled language for UNIVAC I * FORTRAN, developed at
IBM * 1st Assembler, IBM * IBM 650, 1st mass produced computer
- 1955: TRIDAC, 1st computer to use transistors
- 1957: DEC founded * IPL, Information Processing Language
- 1958: ALGOL 58, ALGOrithmic Language * Atlas, designed at University of
Manchester, England * LISP, LISt Processor
- 1959: COBOL, COmmon Business Oriented Language * DEC PDP-1
- 1960: ALGOL 60, popular in Europe
- 1962: CTSS, Compatible Time-Sharing System
- 1964: PL/1 and APL * DEC PDP-8, 1st mass produced minicomputer
- 1965: Control Data 6600, 1st successful commercial computer * Control
Data PDP-8, 1st commercial supercomputer * BASIC programming language *
XDS-940, University of California at Berkeley, time-shared system * Simula
* ARPANet
- 1966: OS/360 * MULTICS, time sharing operating system, MIT
- 1968: THE, operating system, Netherlands, layer structure and concurrent
processing * Burroughs B2500/3500, 1st commercial computer to use IC chip
- 1969: Laser Printer * UNIX (Thompson and Ritchie, AT&T)
- 1970: Pascal * RC 4000, designed by Regenecentralen, operating-system
nucleus, or kernel
- 1971: Intel, 1st commercial microprocessor (4004), 4 bit, .06 MIPS, $300
- 1972: C * Smalltalk
- 1973: Ethernet at Xerox PARC * Winchester hard disk
- 1975: Altair, 1st hobbyist desktop computer, Intel 8080, 256 bytes, $480
- 1976: MCP, multi-CPU operating system * SCOPE, multi-CPU system * Cray 1
supercomputer, 138 megaFLOPS
- 1977: Personal computers: Apple II, Radio Shack TSR80, Commodore PET *
CPM operating system
- 1978: DEC VAX with VMS operating system
- 1979: UNIX 3BSD * Ada * Visicalc
- 1981: IBM PC, 16K of RAM * Xerox Alto, 1st workstation, graphic-user
interface, ethernet, mouse, smalltalk
- 1982: Compaq, 1st portable computer * Turbo Pascal * Modula 2
- 1984: Apple Macintosh, 1st personal computer w/ graphic-user interface *
TrueBASIC * SunOS * PostScript
- 1985: C++ * Microsoft Windows
- 1987: OS/2 * 4Mbit DRAM chip * Introduction of LANS (Local Area Networks)
within large organizations
- 1988: NeXT, UNIX workstation, object oriented system, graphic-user interface
- 1989: Motif, standard graphic-user interface for UNIX workstation * Intel
80486 chip
- 1990: Windows 3.0 * Modula 3
- 1992: Sun Solaris multi-threaded, multi-processing, real-time UNIX
operating system
- 1993: Windows NT * IBM/Apple/Motorola PowerPC processor * Intel Pentium
Some interesting notes for those of you keeping score:
- Computer science has always been a progressive field. The first
programmer, Ada Lovelace, was female.
- About the time I was busy being born, they had just invented the modern
hard drive design. Today, something about half the size of a bar of soap can
hold 500 megabytes of data. And the really expensive drives can put at least
100 megabytes of data on a drive platter the size of a half dollar. (And
there was a point a 10 megabyte harddrive was the size of a briefcase, and
they thought you'd never need to store more than 10 megs. Gee, they obviously
didn't have Tie Fighter back then.)
- For all of you getting so very excited about the new "Information
Superhighway" (and if I hear that one more time, I'm going to scream): It's
already here, you're just now finding out about it. The rest of us call it
the Internet; and it isn't new. It first started evolving way back in 1965
with ARPAnet, a Defense Department project. Another note, for those of you
wanting censorship and control and all that... ARPAnet (and therefore
Internet) was designed to ALWAYS get data through, even if large portions of
it are wiped out, say, by nuclear war. You can't stop it, it was designed to
be a free-form anarchy.
- Interesting thing to know: Digital logic (ie: processors) shrink by half
every 3 years, and double in speed every 4. Memory and hard drive capacity
quadruples every 3 years, and are 1.4x faster every 10 years. Pretty soon,
re-writeable CD's will become commonplace, storing 650 megabytes per disk.
(And yet, 8086's and tape drives still do useful things, and FORTRAN is
written in columns because of punchcards.)
Last Updated: 10-15-95
Comments and corrections to PyroDude:
gt3162b@prism.gatech.edu