SOS-3

WYSIWYG

what you see is what you get; coined by the PARC team to describe Bravo

John McCarthy

computer scientist who promoted the idea of timesharing; also created the Lisp programming language

Smalltalk

A programming language that pioneered object-oriented programming; invented by Alan Kay, a PARC researcher

ARPA

Advanced Research Projects Agency; an organization sponsored by the U.S. government

Apple Lisa

Alto-inspired computer at Apple; in 1979 Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC and instantly knew that Alto's mouse-driven point-and-click GUI was the way of the future; released n 1983; technically brilliant but far too expensive

BIOS

Basic Input/Output System; software that allowed the operating system to communicate with the hardware

BASIC

Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code; developed at Dartmouth College by John Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz in 1964; wanted to create a programming language that was easier to learn and understand for students; interpreted rather than compiled (the computer translates a single line of BASIC program into machine code and immediately runs it, then translates, and runs the next line, and so on) which allowed for rapid feedback; also used teletypes for input and output; caught on quickly and by 1968 it was taught by many universities and high schools; highly influential programming environment

BSD Unix

Berkeley Standard Distribution Unix; University of California at Berkeley added their own improvements to Unix

DEC

Digital Equipment Corporation; one of the primary forces in the reduction in computer costs; founded by Kenneth Olsen in 1957; creator of the minicomputer

Multics

General Electric, MIT, and AT&T Bell Labs worked together to design a timesharing operating system to replace CTSS; over-engineered and over-ambitious; took much longer to develop than expected and had high goals and expectations, suffered from "second-system effect"; ended up bloated, slow, and buggy; delivered incomplete and behind schedule; after many years of delay, a scaled-down version was finally delivered to MIT in 1969, however performance was disappointing, could only support up to 25 users at once, lower than CTSS; last Multics installation was decommissioned October 2000

Bravo

first GUI-based word processor; created by the PARC team; took advantage of the bitmapped display screen to let users see what the document would look like while they edited it; WYSIWYG

PC clones

IBM PC vulnerable to imitation as it was made mostly from off-the-shelf parts; only thing standing in the way of making an identical computer was the BIOS which was uniquely IBM's and not for sale; however Compaq reverse engineered IBM's BIOS in 1982 and began selling its own IBM PC-compatible computer in 1983 at a lower price than a genuine IBM PC; Phoenix Technologies did the same but simply sold copies of its BIOS; within 5 years of it's introduction, over half of the PCs sold were clones; one of the most successful makers of PC clones was Dell Computer Corporation; bad news for IBM but good news for Microsoft and MS-DOS and operating systems in general became the platform that mattered

IPTO

Information Processing Techniques Office

timesharing

John McCarthy at MIT believed that computers could be made available to a wider audience through this process; in 1959, he proposed that multiple keyboard terminals could all be connected to a central computer, allowing several users to access the computer at the same time; assumption that "computers are fast but humans are slow": during the time it takes a human to read some output from the computer, or to decide what key to press next, the computer could be running another program or responding to another user's query; idea of a universal "computer utility" never caught on; it continued but on a smaller scale

IBM AN/FSQ-7

MIT transferred technology used to develop project whirlwind to IBM; dozens were built; formed the basis of the Air Force's SAGE defense system

MS-DOS

Microsoft Disk Operating System; formed the basis of virtually all of Microsoft's operating systems for the next 20 years

Wang OIS

Office Information System; one of the first commercially successful word processors; introduced in 1977; a specialized computer in and of itself; had a keyboard, high-resolution monitor; and a microprocessor that allowed it to process the users' commands locally; stored documents on a centralized server rather than on a local disk

The Alto

PARC's computer; initially tried to develop a timesharing system but then settled on the revolutionary idea of a personal computer; had a monitor with a rectangular display screen that was large enough to display the contents of a standard sheet of typing paper; screen was also bitmapped, meaning that it could display both text and pictures simultaneously; also had a three button mouse in addition to the keyboard; finished in 1973; had all the recognizable peripherals of a modern desktop computer: keyboard, mouse, monitor, and printer; however it was difficult for computers to share data with one another so Robert Metcalfe took inspiration from ALOHAnet and connected Alto computers together using a cheap coaxial cable and called the system Ethernet

Xerox PARC

Palo Alto Research Center; in 1970, Xerox founded a world-class research center to develop computer technologies that they could then spin off as products; managed by Robert Taylor, a former director at ARPA; pioneer of many concepts of modern computing such as GUI (WYSIWYG), laser printers, Ethernet, and OOP; Xerox's attempts to market its technology largely failed

PDP-1

Programmed Data Processor; DEC's first computer; used both transistors and core memory; as powerful as computers from other firms but priced far cheaper because of its spartan business model where they didn't offer advanced peripherals, didn't supply application software, and spent almost no money on marketing; it filled a nice of offering low-cost computers to technically savvy users

QDOS

Quick and Dirty Operating System developed by Tim Patterson; compatible with Intel 8088; similar to CP/M

SAGE

Semi-Automated Ground Environment air defense system; decommissioned in the early 1980s; based on Whirlwind technology; distributed air defense system for the U.S. Air Force

SABRE

Semi-automatic Business Research Environment; IBM develops an interactive reservations system influenced by SAGE for American Airlines; fully operational by 1964; travel agents accessed the SABRE system via keyboard terminals that were networked to a centralized data center in New York; gave American Airlines the ability to keep track of not only its customers' flight plans, but virtually every other aspect of its daily business; by the 1970s, all major airlines were using interactive computerized reservation systems; first non-military application of interactive computing

Windows 2.0

suffered from many of the same flaws as the first version and is little remembered today

TCP/IP

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol; developed in 1974 by Vint Cert and Bob Khan; is still used by today's global internet; allowed different networks to communicate

killer app

a computer application so compelling that users want to buy the computer just to run the program; historical examples include e-mail, spreadsheets, and the World Wide Web

teletype keyboards

a keyboard and a printer combined into one unit; mass produced, sturdy, and inexpensive; pioneered use of "escape" and "control" keys; were networked to the central timesharing computer, which interpreted user's commands and returned the results, which were immediately printed on paper

PDP-11 (and its impacts)

a more powerful minicomputer; introduced in 1970; was the quintessential minicomputer; operating system that DEC created for it was called RSTS-11, supported cost-effective timesharing which allowed organizations to run their own time-sharing operation in house, and included a modified version of BASIC which expanded the language's reach where programmers would create a large library of BASIC software including simple computer games; the C programming language was originally written on a PDP-11 computer, which would influence many other popular programming languages; the Unix operating system, written in C for the PDP-11 was a popular alternative to RSTS-11 and much of the foundational software for the internet and WWW would be written using Unix; the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, used in Apple's early Macintosh computers, was patterned after the PDP-11 architecture

Usenet

a network created by a group of universities in 1980; the computers linked by Usenet were primarily minicomputers running the Unix operating system (which ARPA did the same in the same year) resulted in the association Unix has had with networking ever since; it included an email service but also pioneered newsgroups that allowed users to post public messages to various online forums categorized by topic and filled a role similar to today's social media

NSFNET

absorbed BITNET and CS Net by 1991; network created in 1986 by the National Science Foundation; larger and better funded than ARPANET; originally restricted access to NSFNET to government and university users only, gradually opened it up to commercialization, which led to the phenomenal growth of the Internet in the 1990s

TRS-80, Commodore PET, and Apple II similarities

all released in 1977; all took a very different approach than the Altair and its imitators: did not use Intel processors, sold as complete systems, the keyboard was an essential part of the computer, designed from the start to be used with display screens rather than a teletype printer, and came with BASIC pre-installed

Commodore

already a respected producer of calculators in the early 70s, decided to enter the computer business

protocol

an agreement on how data ought to be formatted, encoded, and transmitted

Gypsie

an updated version of Bravo produced in 1975 that was easier to use

Atari

best remembered as a gaming company; also branched out into general-purpose computing in 1979 by creating its own line of personal computers

Commodore 64

best selling desktop computer of all time; released by Commodore in 1982

General Electric

capitalized on IBM's perceived weakness of not supporting/investing in timesharing; was used for Dartmouth College's timesharing system; was used for Multics at MIT; in response IBM hurriedly added timesharing support to future System/360 models

CRT

cathode-ray tube

John Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz

co-developers of the BASIC programming language

Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie

co-developers of the Unix operating system

CTSS

compatible time-sharing system; in 1963, a team at MIT lead by Fernando Corbato built this timesharing system; consisted of an IBM 7090 computer attached to a 28MB disk drive; each user was allocated part of the disk, called a directory, where they could store their data; could support up to 30 simultaneous users at peak; users typed their commands onto teletype keyboards; users developed a variety of tools such as text editors; by 1965, it also supported electronic mail; finally decommissioned in 1973

Microsoft's attempts at GUI

could either create a new operating system that incorporated a GUI (OS/2) or create a GUI program that ran atop MS-DOS (Windows); development of both Windows and OS/2 continued in parallel for a few years, OS/2 never than popular and Microsoft lost interest in it although technically superior and development stopped by 1994, Microsoft's superior marketing had won out

Pong

created by Atari in 1971; not written in software, instead created by wiring several microchips together

Ethernet

created by Robert Metcalfe initially to connect Alto machines with one another using a wired connection; took inspiration from ALOHAnet; named after the mythical element "ether" (empty space) as a nod to ALOHAnet's practice of transmitting data through the air; PARC finished designing it in 1974; could support speeds of 3 million bits per second

C programming language

created in 1972 at AT&T Bell Labs; originally written on a PDP-11 computer; created by Dennis Ritchie to implement Unix; minimalist design compared to FORTRAN or COBOL

Norm Abramson

creater of ALOHAnet, the first wireless network

Alan Kay

creator of Smalltalk programming language, and object-oriented programming

Barbra Liskov

creator of the CLU programming language, which along with Smalltalk helped popularize OOP

Vint Cert and Bob Kahn

creators of the TCP/IP, the protocol on which the Internet runs

first laser printer

designed by PARC researchers at Xerox; uses laser beams, rather than metal type or pins, to control the placement of ink on the page; can print documents containing both text and images with very high precision

Apple II

designed by Steve Wozniak with input from Steve Jobs; the company's first mass-produced computer; could display color graphics which made it ideal for developing and playing video games

Fernando Corbato

developer of CTSS, an early timesharing system at MIT

J.C.R. Licklider

director of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA); introduced the modern notion of networking in which entire computers are connected together in 1963; hope that by networking expensive computers together, researches would be able to utilize them more economically, users of each computer would also have access to every other computer on the network, reducing the need for specialized facilities at each site

Robert Taylor

director of the Xerox PARC research team, which invented many technologies used in personal computers

project whirlwind

early interactive computer; in 1944 near the end of World War II, U.S. Air Force contracted with the Servomechanisms Laboratory at MIT to build a general-purpose flight simulator that could be programmed to simulate any type of aircraft in order to train pilots; Jay Forrester was put in charge; over the next few years, the original motivation was gradually forgotten and the team focused simply on creating the fastest computer possible; operational by 1951, fastest computer in the world at that time and most reliable; supported a cathode-ray tube display screen in addition to a printer that allowed for the computer to display output in real time and opened up the possibility for simple graphics rather than paper output

CLU

early object-oriented programming language developed by Barbra Liskov at MIT

VisiCalc

first computerized spreadsheet program; propelled personal computers into the business world; co-creator was Daniel Bricklin, chose to create it for the Apple II computer; first released in 1979; first killer app; created a new category of business software that had not existed previously

video games and computers

first created for minicomputers, then as custom machines in arcades, then as software for personal computers; computer games were one of the motivating reasons for people to purchase home computers in the late 1970s and early 1980s; personal computers, with their small size, low cost, and interactive video screens, provided an ideal platform for video games to flourish; some of the most popular games began as dedicated arcade consoles before being ported to personal computers; some of today's most respected game publishers such as Activision and Electronic Arts got their start in the early home computer era; some of the earliest video games were custom computers in and of themselves such as Pong and Breakout, both from Atari

ARPANET

first long-distance computer network; enabled by store and forward packet switching; various computers from a variety of vendors and operating systems could be connected together; used an inexpensive minicomputer called an interface message processor at each site, it served as an intermediary between the host computer and the rest of the network, as long as the IMPs all ran the same systems software, the host itself could be any type of computer; at first only consisted of 4 nodes at universities, but by the late 1970s, over 100 sites were connected; over the years the need for a separate IMP at each site was eliminated with the introduction of TCP/IP as software implementing TCP/IP was written for various computer models which allowed for each host to connect to the ARPANET directly rather than through an IMP; fueled the development of email and it became the network's single biggest source of traffic; popular applications include email, remote login, and file transfer; officially decommissioned in 1990 and its sites were transferred to NSFNET

ALOHAnet

first wireless computer network / packet-based radio network; in 1969, Norm Abramson, a professor at the University of Hawaii, realized that Hawaii's landscape made it difficult to build a traditional computer network so he developed a network in which packets were transmitted via radio signals rather than over telephone lines; helped inspire the invention of the Ethernet

Kenneth Olsen

founded Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC); former MIT computer engineer; also previously worked on designing the core memory for Project Whirlwind; an influential developer of minicomputers

GUI

graphical user interface

J. C. R. Licklider

helped to create the ARPANET, the forerunner of today's internet

second-system effect

idea that the general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one; coined by Fred Brooks while working on the OS/360

Xerox Star

improved version of the Alto that was released for sale to the public 5 years after the Alto prototype was complete; featured a GUI; wide adoption slowed by late arrival and high price tag; felt sluggish and Xerox never released tools for programmers to develop applications for the Star, so software was limited; other companies had already produced many inexpensive personal computers, though not as powerful, were easier to develop software for; Xerox stopped selling computers altogether by the end of the 1980s

slow development of word processing for personal computers

in 1970s most popular personal computers could only display about 25 lines of text at 40 characters per line; however later withe the arrival of more powerful personal computers coupled with inexpensive word processing software such as WordStar and WordPerfect would render custom word-processing machines like Wang OIS obsolete

Dell Computer Corporation

in 1983, Michael Dell began upgrading and reselling PCs from his dorm room at UT Austin; in 1985, his company began making its own PCs instead of simply adding components to pre-built machines; at first sold its computer exclusively through mail order, which allowed Dell to keep its inventory minimal and prices low

IBM PC

in July 1980, William C. Lowe made a proposal to the senior management of IBM to create a personal computer and proposed something radical, building a computer composed almost entirely of off-the-shelf parts so that they would be able to release a computer much faster; used Intel's 8088 and Microsoft's version of BASIC; os was MS-DOS; began selling the PC in August 1981 and sold exceptionally well helped by its reputation; software developers soon created a variety of spreadsheet, word processor, and other productivity software for the IBM PC; soon supplanted by inexpensive clones; use of MS-DOS led to Microsoft, not IBM, dominating the personal computer industry

Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, and Donald Davies

independently developed the concept of store and forward packet switching for computer networks

microprocessor

innovation that made small inexpensive computers possible; in 1969, a Japanese calculator manufacturer approached Intel with a request to design some custom chips for inclusion in a high-end calculator, Ted Hoff was assigned to the project, rather than create specialized chips for calculator functions, Hoff realized that he could instead design a general-purpose chip, then build specific calculator functions in software; Intel released the new chip in 1971 as the 4004 microprocessor and marketed it as a "computer on a chip"; later would create improved versions such as 8008 and 8080; opened the door for a wave of small, cheap computers

Intel

integrated electronics; co-founded by Robert Noyce and fellow engineer Gordon Moore; started a new company that would specialize in designing and manufacturing microchips; Robert Noyce, one of the inventors of the integrated circuit worked at Fairchild Semiconductor, a company he co-founded, during the late 1960s, he later persuaded a few of his co-workers to join him in starting a new company in 1968

IMP

interface Message Processor

mouse

invented by Douglas Engelbart in 1964; featured in a famous 1968 demonstration known today as the "Mother of All Demos"

Robert Metcalfe

inventor of Ethernet, a design for high-speed local area networks

Douglas Englebart

inventor of the computer mouse

OS/2

jointly announced by Microsoft and IBM in April 1987; coincided with IBM's latest model of personal computer PS/2; intended as successor to both MS-DOS and Windows

Jay Forrester

leader of Project Whirlwind, the first interactive computer

Altair 8800

led to the ubiquity of Intel hardware and Microsoft software; announced in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine; advertised as a minicomputer that cost less than $400; low-cost due to off-the-shelf parts; sold as a kit rather than a pre-assembled computer; 256 bytes of memory and no input/output peripherals; programming accomplished by manually loading instructions into memory by manually loading instructions into memory by toggling switches on the front panel of the machine; only output was a series of blinking lights; expansion cards soon available that gave the Altair more memory and the ability to connect to external devices; other companies created their own Altair-like machines to meet the high demand for personal computers; helped to kickstart Microsoft as Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed a version of BASIC that was compatible with the Altair's Intel 8080 processor, which they soon licensed to other computer manufacturers as it was both fast and powerful

TRS-80

made by Radio Shack, already an established electronics retailer in 1977; able to use its fast network of stores to sell and service the computer, giving it a wide audience

Commodore PET

monolithic machine that included a keyboard, monitor, and cassette tape drive all in one chassis; however calculator-like keyboard might have limited its appeal; followed up with the Commodore VIC-20 in 1980 and Commodore 64 in 1982

Minitel Network

national computer network in France; in the 1970s and 1980s, the French government made heavy investments in improving the national telecommunications network; in part to reduce the costs associated with printing paper phonebooks, the French government distributed millions of "Minitel" terminals which consisted of a small display screen and a keyboard that connected to a household's phone line; users could look up phone numbers, read news, check the weather, order train tickets, and access over a thousand other online services; present in a large portion of French homes 10 years before most Americans had ever heard of the Internet; however France was slow to adopt the internet and this network became less and less important as the Internet grew; finally shut down in 2012

CS Net

network created in 1981 to give computer science departments at various universities without ARPANET the ability to send and receive emails; later merged with BITNET in 1989

BITNET

network started by the City University of New York ; allowed user access to the university's IBM mainframes; later merged with CS Net in 1989

daisy wheel printer

operates like a typewriter: strikes diecast letters against a ribbon of ink; produces nice-looking documents but cannot print images

OEM

original equipment manufacturer; industry where companies would buy computers (like the PDP-8), tack on customized hardware and software, and resell then for specialized applications

RSTS-11

os for the PDP-11

object-oriented programming

programmers first create the data structures, called classes, and then design procedures, called methods, that operate on instances, called objects, of those classes; helps programmers keep their code well organized, thereby enabling the creation of larger, more robust programs

batch-oriented programming

programmers would submit their program (as decks of punched cards) to a computer operator, who would schedule time on the computer to run the program; the program's output, in the form of printed sheets of paper, would be returned to the programmer a few hours (or days) later; before interactive computing; most computing prior to the 1970s was oriented as such, but there were a few exceptions

store and forward packet switching

proposed independently by Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, and Donald Davies in the 1960s; borrows an idea from old telegraph networks: only the major cities were networked together, and then each major city would have telegraph lines connecting it to the smaller offices nearby; in order to prevent one single user (or a large transmission) from monopolizing the network and delaying other messages from getting through, each message was broken up into smaller chunks called packets, each packet would contain the address of its destination computer, as each packet reached a node in the network, it would check the address and forward it on as needed, once all the packets from a particular transmission reached their destination node, it would re-assemble the packets back into the original message

personal computer industry

quickly dominated by IBM PC and clones, and Apple Macintosh; over the next few years, other manufacturers such as Radio Shack, Commodore, and Atari either stopped making computers or went

Macintosh advertisement

ran now-famous advertisement during the 1984 Super Bowl alluding to the dystopian future of George Orwell's novel 1984; hordes of bored-looking bald men in drab gray jumpsuits passively watch a large video display of Big Brother's talking head, in runs a young woman dressed in brightly colored athletic clothes and pursued by armed soldiers, she defiantly hurls a sledgehammer at Big Brother's image, causing an explosion of bright light that wakes the men from their stupor; message clear: IBM had a stifling stranglehold on computing and Apple was here to lead the industry into a bold new future; one of the most widely recognized and influential commercials of all time

PDP-8

really cheap computer compared to other computers (only $18,000); only the size of a refrigerator; represented a new category of computers - minicomputers (not mainframes); commercial success; allowed more people to have access to computers than ever before; help to launch the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) industry; first successful minicomputer

Windows 1.0

released by Microsoft in 1985; software layer than ran on top of MS-DOS and provided a simple GUI; slow and buggy

Windows 3.0

released in 1990; vast improvement; interface very similar to Apple's GUI, yet it ran on relatively cheap PC hardware rather than Apple's more expensive customized machines; took advantage of Intel's 80386 chip; supported overlapping windows and had better support for multimedia applications than previous versions

Apple Macintosh

response to IBM PC's popularity; an affordable computer based on the GUI design inspired by GUI research at Xerox PARC; far smaller screen than Lisa or Star; no internal hard disk, just one 3 1/2 in floppy disk drive, and no expansion slots, only 128KB of memory, housed in a plastic shell roughly ten inches wide and one foot tall and deep making it portable and non-threatening to novice computer users; first to bring computers with GUI and mouse to a wide audience; by the end of the 1980s, most computers included a mouse

commercial timesharing startups in the 1960s

short-lived; most of them going under within the decade; 2 reasons: difficulty of getting large-scale, multi-user software to work reliably, and the gradual decrease in hardware costs (people could buy their own machine, along with a few sturdy teletypes, and manage their own small timesharing system in-house)

dot matrix printer

strikes many tiny pins against an ink ribbon; prints both text and images, but the resulting document is often clotty and pixelated

result of the Multics project

stung by difficulties and delays, Bell Labs withdrew from the project in 1969, and the following year General Electric sold its computer division to Honeywell, which dutifully provided technical support for Multics for many years

IBM PC's OS

wanted to use CP/M as os but unable to make a deal so turned to Microsoft where Bill Gates offered to provide IBM with an os and convinced them to pay Microsoft a small license fee for each copy sold and Microsoft would also retain the right to license the os to other companies; however when Gates negotiated this deal, Microsoft did not have an operating system at all; contacted Tim Paterson who worked at Seattle Computer Products who created QDOS; Microsoft first licensed QDOS from SCP and later purchased it outright renaming it MS-DOS

Unix

written in C for the PDP-11 at AT&T Bell Labs; popular alternative to RSTS-11; would be used to write much of the foundational software for the Internet and modern operating systems; two Bell Labs employees (also former Multics programmers), Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie created this os (a snarky pun on Multics) using the PDP-7; first written in assembly, later C, which made it portable as long as the user had a C compiler; at first copies sold to universities at a low price as AT&T was government-regulated monopoly and was not allowed to enter into venture not directly related to its core business of telephony; used heavily at universities