102.01 Computer History

Hexadecimal

Base 16 numbering system which uses the numbers 0-9 and letters A-F to represent the decimal numbers 0-15.

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)

Character code built for the letters, number and symbols on a keyboard.

XEROX Corporation Ltd.

Company originally headquartered in Stamford, CT that produces copiers and other printing devices; their researchers developed the graphical user interface, computer mouse and desktop computing.

Homebrew Computer Club

Computer hobbyist group that first formed to figure out what could be done with the Altair 8800.

Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC)

Computer language that was intended for simplicity of use.

Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)

Division of the Xerox Corporation that developed items such as laser printing, Ethernet, the GUI and object-oriented programming.

CP/M

Early operating system (OS) created by Gary Kildall for Intel 8080 based microcomputers.

MITS

Electronics company founded in Albuquerque, NM that created the Altair 8800 computer kit.

IBM PC

First MS-DOS based personal computer.

Compaq

First company to manufacture a PC clone

Altair 8800

First personal computer; came as a computer kit developed at MITS. It would eventually run BASIC licensed from Microsoft.

Macintosh

First successful mouse-driven computer with a graphical user interface and built-in applications, MacPaint and MacWrite. It provided WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) word processing using Adobe printer drivers.

Microsoft

Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800 and is to date the largest manufacturer of PC-compatible operating system and office software.

Linux

Free and open source operating system software.

Windows

Graphical user interface and operating system developed by Microsoft.

Apple II

Highly successful mass-produced microcomputer designed by Steve Wozniak and stylized and marketed by Steve Jobs.

World Wide Web (WWW) -

Invented by Tim Berners-Lee, it is a system of interlinked hypertext documents that can be accessed by the Internet; web browsers are needed to view web pages.

Ethernet

Local area network (LAN) technology developed at Xerox PARC to link computer workstations together.

Adobe Systems

Multimedia and creativity, software company founded by John Warnock and Charles Geschke. They licensed their PostScript language for use in laser printers so that what you saw on the monitor was the same as the output on your printer.

Disk Operating System (DOS)

Operating system designed for the IBM PC compatible market from 1981 to 1995; Windows 1.0 through 3.1 required this OS in order to run.

UNIX

Originally developed by Bell Labs, it is an operating system that allows multiple users and multitasking.

Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET)

Packet switching network that was first to implement TCP/IP.

International Business Machines (IBM)

Server manufacturer that got into the personal computer business in 1981.

Visicalc

The first computer spreadsheet program.

Alto

The first computer workstation with a built-in mouse for inputting data. It stored files in windows, had icons and menus, and could link to a local area network.

Netscape Navigator

The first, most dominant web browser.

Binary

The number system that computer language is built on. It only has 2 characters, 0 and 1, and is also known as a base 2 numbering system.

GNUs Not Unix (GNU)

Unix-like operating system but completely free.