Acadec Soc Sci Section III

What time did IBM start developing SABRE with American Airlines, what did it stand for, by what year was it fully operational, what was the system accessed by, where was the centralized data center, what computers did it run on?

1950s, stood for (Semi-automatic Business Research Environment), operational by 1964, accessed by keyboard terminals, New York, it ran on IBM 7090 mainframes

When was Whirlwind operational

1951

In what year, at what college, led by who, did CTSS start, what does it stand for, what computer did it have and what was the storage on its disk drive

1963, MIT, Fernando Corbato, stands for (Compatible Time Sharing System), used a IBM 7090, had a 28 megabyte disk drive

By what year was BASIC being taught at many universities

1968

In what year did a _____ company come to Intel for chips for their advanced calculator, which engineer at Intel was assigned this, what did he try to design instead of a specific function chip, when did they release the chip and what was it called, by what year did they have the ____ and _____ versions of this chip

1969 Japanese, Ted Hoff, general purpose chip, 1971 called the microprocessor, 1974 8080 and 8008

When did Bell Labs withdraw from the project, which company sold their computer division to Honeywell, when was the last Multics decommissioned

1969(same year it was delivered to MIT), General Electric sold their computer division to Honeywell, last Multics was decommissioned in 2000

By what decade were all major airlines using interactive computerized reservation systems

1970s

During which decades did the French government make improvements on telecommunications, what were the changes in percent of households with telephones with dates, what did a minitel consist of, when was it shut down

1970s and 80s, 1970-8% of population had access to telephones and in 1989 it was 95%, small display screen and a keyboard that connected to a household's phone line, 2012

When was the C programming language created and where, what computer was it written on,

1972 AT&T Bell Labs, PDP-11,

when was the Alto first finished, how many were made within a year, what was a deficiency in the "one user one computer model"

1973, 40 were made and were being used internally by PARC researchers, a deficiency is that sharing files was harder since they needed to timeshare across all their devices using long distance telecommunication lines, instead before they were all connected to one mainframe

When was the Altair 8800 announced in what magazine, what was it advertised as, what was its low cost due to, describe its characteristics,

1975 issue of the Popular Electronics Magazine, advertised as a minicomputer for less than 400$, off-shelf parts, intel 8080 chip, sold as a kit, 256 bytes of memory, no input/output peripherals, only output was blinking lights

When and what was Microsoft's first product

1975, scaled down version of BASIC

In what year did a group of universities create Usenet, what computers did Usenet link primarily, why is Unix associated with computer networking, what did Usenet pioneer,

1980, minicomputers that ran Unix, because ARPA wanted its users to switch to Unix due to its portability, basically a social media network within itself(newsgroups is their term)

By the end of which decade did Xerox stop selling computers all together.

1980s

What was CS Net made for and when, who started BITNET and what did it allow, in what year did these two networks merge and what were they absorbed by, when was this network made and who made it, what were the two separate yet cooperative networks now

1981 and for computer science departments without ARPANET the ability to send emails, BITNET was started by the University of New York and it allowed people to connect to IBM mainframes, these networks merged together in 1989 and was absorbed by NSFNET which was made by the National Science Foundation in 1986, NSFNET and ARPANET

When did the IBM PC began being sold, did it sell well or poorly

August 1981, sold well

How many users was it projected to support, what effect did it suffer from, when was it delivered to MIT, what computer was it built on and how many users could it support

300, second-system effect, delivered to MIT in 1969, built on a GE 645 and it could support 25 users

What did the Xerox Star feature, why was its adoption slowed, why did the Star feel sluggish, did Xerox release tools for programmers to create applications for the Star and if not what were programmers using

A GUI and a screen that people could click icons on, because of its high price tag and late arrival, because hardware was not strong enough yet, no causing programmers to be stuck with the software Xerox released

What was one key difference between ARPANET and its predecessors, what was the purpose of an IMP and what does it stand for,

ARPANET ran across many devices whereas CTSS and BASIC were designed for a single computer type, an IMP was an intermediary between two computers, as long as the IMPs ran the same kind of software the types of computers they were connecting did not matter, it also stood for (Interface message processor)

Who worked on Multics and what was its purpose

AT&T Bell Labs, General Electric, and MIT worked on Multics and it was meant to replace CTSS as a timesharing operating system

Who invented Smalltalk and what is it, is Smalltalk similar to FOTRAN that focuses on blocks and blocks of code, or does it use Object Oriented Programming, who at what college developed CLU language

Alan Kay and Smalltalk is a programming language designed to make software programming easier, it uses Object Oriented Programming, Barbara Liskov at MIT

What was the PARC's computer called, what was different about it, The screen was _____, meaning it could display both text and images simultaneously, when was the 3button mouse invented, by who, and in what specific demonstration

Alto, had a monitor instead of a printer, bitmapped, 1968 by Douglas Engelbart in the "Mother of all demos"

Why was AT&T hesitant to commercialize Unix, because of their situation what did AT&T opt to do, what did AT&T's flexible license allow universities to do with their code, who made BSD Unix and what does it stand for,

Because they were under a government regulated monopoly and they were not allowed to venture directly into any business other than telephony, so they opted to sell Unix with C source code to universities, allowed them to change up Unix source code, Berkeley and it stands for Berkeley Standard Distribution

What was different about email on ARPANET, when was it invented, and when did it become the biggest source of traffic on the network

Before email could only be used with people from the same organization(email was apart of CTSS), became part of ARPANET in 1971, 1975

What was IBM's first choice for a programming language and did they use it, why or why not

CP/M from Gary Kildall owner of Digital Research, they did not use it because he was not at home and IBM needed a non-disclosure agreement signed, and his wife refused so they left

Commodore was a respected producer of what during what decade, describe what the Commodore PET had, what computers did Commodore follow up with and in what years, what is to this day the best selling desktop computer of all time

Calculators during early 1970s, keyboard, monitor, and cassete drive all in one "block" shape, followed up with Commodore VIC-20 and the Commodore 64 in 1980 and 1982 respectively, Commodore 64 is best selling

this person at what college in what year proposed the process of timesharing

John McCarthy at MIT, 1959

When were three new personal computers released and what were their names, how did they take different approaches than the Altair,

Commodore PET, Apple II, and the TRS-80 were the three new personal computers and they were released in 1977, took on a different approach by not using Intel processors, came as a full system not a kit u had to make, came with a display screen not a printer, BASIC pre-installed

Where was Servomechanisms Laboratory and what was it contacted for, who contacted it, and what was the project called as well as its leader

Contacted at MIT in 1944 to make a flight simulator for training pilots, U.S Air Force contacted them, called Project Whirlwind and Jay Forrester led it

Which company was a major reason in reduction in computer costs, who and in what year made it, what was his capital venture, what did he design previously for Project Whirlwind

DEC(Digital Equipment Corporation), Kenneth Olsen in 1957, 70000 capital venture, designed core memory

Who got the idea for creating VisiCalc and how did he get this idea

Daniel Bricklin, he got the idea after watching his Harvard professor grind numbers on a grid on a chalkboard

What was Licklider the director of, what was his hope with networking,

Director of IPTO(Information Processing Techniques Office) of ARPA(Advanced Research Projects Agency), he hoped that with networking researchers would be able to utilize expensive computers more effectively

What was VisiCalc and when was it released

First computerized spreadsheet, 1979

What computer was BASIC built around

General Electric 235 that had been customized for timesharing

Within a year of Project Whirlwind what did Jay Forrester realize?

His analog design would not be fast enough for the immediate response time required of a flight simulator

Describe characteristics of the IBM PC

Intel 8808 Chip, Microsoft's version of BASIC for programming language

Why was the need for a separate IMP eliminated, who introduced the protocol and when, and what does this invention do?

Introduction of TCP/IP, Bob Kahn and Vint Cert in 1974, allowed each host to connect to ARPANET directly without the need of an IMP

who created BASIC, what college did they attend and what was their purpose

John Kemeny and Thomas E Kurtz, Dartmouth college and their purpose was that all students should have access to computing, not just comp sci students or engineering students

Who and in what decade came up with store and forward packet switching, what does it do, what problem was it meant to help,

Leonard Kleinrock, Donald Davies, and Paul Baron in 1960s, it takes form old telegraph networks in that it sends a message from city to city , messages would be printed at offices along the way, stores, and if desired they would be forwarded along, and messages were broken into packets to not allow one user to cause the network to slow down, it was meant to help the problem that connecting many nodes would be tough

When were many timesharing startups created, what were the two reasons for why they fell under

Many startups were created during the 60s, reasons for companies going under was that the difficulty of getting a large scale multi user software to work was large, and the second was that as computer prices dropped organizations would just buy more and have a timesharing system in house

What company did the Altair 8800 help kickstart, what college did Bill Gates go to, who were the two people that developed a version of BASIC that was compatible with what processor, what did Microsoft do with their version of BASIC

Microsoft, Harvard, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Intel 8080, license it to other companies

By what decade did Xerox feel to transform their works into marketable products, was Xerox more successful at selling and making laser printers or computers at first, in what year did Xerox release an updated version of the Alto the public and what was it called

Mid 1970s, laser printers, 1981 Xerox Star

What microprocessor was patterned after the PDP-11

Motorola 68000

Was ARPANET or NSFNET larger and better funded, when was ARPANET decommissioned, what did the National Science Foundation do which led to the phenomenal growth of the internet in the 1990s

NSFNET, 1990, they opened up NSFNET to the public because previously it was only allowed by government and colleges

In what year, where, and who founded ALOHAnet, what were packets transmitted with

Norm Abramson, 1969, at the University of Hawaii, radio signals instead of telephone lines

Problems of FORTRAN for John Kemeny and Thomas E Kurtz, and when was BASIC created, what did it stand for

Obtuse language is hard for beginners, compiling took too long, 1964, Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

What did Jay Forrester realize would give the speed his system needed

Only digital circuits like the one from the ENIAC

What team created the first graphical user interface, what was it called, what did it take advantage of, in what year did PARC produce an updated version of the GUI and what was it called, who did Xerox test the program with and how did they feel about it

PARC, Bravo, took advantage of the bitmapped design to allow users to see their documents as they edited it, 1975 Gypsie, tested the program with textbook publishing company's employees who loved it

What was their first computer and when was it released, what does it stand for, the ____ used both ____ and ____, what was its price, how were they able to market these cheap computers

PDP-1 in 1960, Programmed Data Processor, PDP-1 used both transistors and microchips, 125000, because they did not offer software, advanced peripherals, and did not spend much on marketing

What was the next more powerful computer after the PDP-8 that DEC released, what year, it was the quintessential _____,

PDP-11, 1970, minicomputer

What computer that DEC produced caused a dent in the marketplace and when, what was its price, how big was it, how many did they sell of this computer over the next decade

PDP-8 in 1965, cost 18000, big as a refrigerator, 30000

What was the operating system for PDP-11, did it support timesharing, if it did support it what did this now allow companies to do, the operating system also included a modified version of ____ programming language, how did most people interact with the PDP-11, when were the first personal computers created

RSTS-11, yes, allowed companies to run their own timesharing system in-house rather than subscribe to a service, BASIC, most people interacted with a teletype printer, 1970s

Who made the TRS-80, was this company able to sell this computer easily or not

Radio Shack, yes

What memory did Whirlwind have replaced, and what screen did it support

Replaced Williams tubes with core memory, support cathode ray tube screen, first interactive computer

which PARC researcher plugged the Alto machines into a cheap coaxial cable that ran through the building in order to transmit data easily, what did he take inspiration from, when was this system of transmission finished, and how man bits could it support

Robert Metcalfe and he called it Ethernet, ALOHAnet, 1974, 3million

Who at Fairchild semiconductor made the microprocessor, in what year did he convince coworkers to leave and make a company that mainly designed microprocessors, what company did he found with Gordon Moore, what did intel mean

Robert Noyce, 1968, Intel(integrated electronics)

Who designed the Apple II, what could the computer do unlike the PET and the TRS-80

Steve Wozniak, it could display color graphics which made it ideal for video games

Who did Gates get a operating system from and why did he need to do so, what was it called, when Microsoft bought it what did they name it

Tim Paterson from Seattle Computer Products because when negotiating with IBM Bill Gates did not have a operating system ready, QDOS(Quick and Dirty Operating System), MS-DOS(Microsoft Disk Operating System)

What did the focus gradually shift to with this project

To make the fastest computer possible

Where were the first four nodes of ARPANET, by the late _____ over ____ sites were connected to the ARPANET

University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at Saint Barbara, Stanford, and University of Utah, 1970s, 100 sites

What is the most visible remnant of the PDP-11 in today's computing environment

Unix operating system

What did Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie create together, what computer did they work on, by what year was this computer almost obsolete, and what made it so that this computer was not completely forgotten

Unix operating system, PDP-7, 1969, trivia that Unix got its start on

Who and in what year made a proposal to IBM to make a PC, what was the radical part of his idea, did management approve his idea or not

William C Lowe in 1980, to use mainly off the self parts so that they could release a PC quickly, yes they did

What was the Unix operating system written in and what/who was it written for, much of the foundational software for ____ and the ____ would be written in Unix, what operating system(s) is Unix the basis for, the smartphone is an example of technology that was first created for the _____

Written for AT&T Bell Labs and written in C, Internet and World Wide Web, operating systems written in Unix: MacOS, Android, iOS, PDP-11

In the mid-twentieth century who was the leader in the copy machine industry, by what decade did Xerox's patents expire, in what year did Xerox found a world class research center to develop computer technologies that they could spin off as products, who was hired to manage the affairs of the lab, what was it called, and what did it stand for

Xerox, 1970s, 1970, Robert Taylor, PARC, Palo Alto Research Center

What was the first version of Unix written in, what did Thompson and Ritchie convince Bell Labs to do, who invented the C programming language, was the operating system implemented in assembly language or C, perks of C language, how did Ritchie and Thompson make Unix portable and what does that mean

assembly language, convinced Bell Labs to get a PDP-11, Dennis Ritchie, C, minimalistic style such as FORTRAN or COBOL but granted a lot of low-level access, by creating Unix with C so that any other computer with the C compiler could run Unix

Why during the 70s was word processing not quick to catch on, what specialized computer introduced in what year was a successful word processor

best computers at the time could only show 25 lines with 40 characters per line which is a lot less than a page, Wang OIS(Office Information System) in 1977

What was Robert Taylor before this, what did they initially try to do, what was the revolutionary idea that they came up with, how did the researchers think this could be economically feasible

former director at ARPA, tried to make a timesharing system, for each member to have personal computer than terminals connected to a large computer, at the time it wasn't but they predicted hardware prices to drop

Describe characteristics of the Wang OIS, what software(s) made word processing machines obsolete

high-resolution monitor, printed user's commands locally, stored documents on a server rather than a disk, WordStar and WordPerfect

How does a daisy wheel printer work, how does dot matrix technology work, what type of printer did the PARC researchers first design,

like a typewriter, by striking letters against a ribbon of ink, dot matrix: by stroking many tiny pins against an ink ribbon, it can do both text and images however they appear pixelated, they invented laser printer

Section III

none

What did the invention of the microprocessor open the doors for, what company did the Altair 8800 come from and where were they

smallwave cheap computers, MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico

What industry did the PDP-8 start, what would companies do, was the PDP-8 used in many systems or in just one, and what are examples of these system(s)

started the OEM industry(Original Equipment Manufacturers) industry, they would buy PDP-8s and implement hardware and software and resell them, they were used in many systems, examples: theatrical and lighting systems

What keyboards did CTSS use, what keys did these keyboards pioneer, each user at CTSS was allocated to a part of the disk called _____, how were results shown, what tools did CTSS make and what was their function, when did it allow electronic mail and when was it decommissioned?

teletypes, Escape and Control keys, directory, printed on paper, made text editors(precursor to word processors) these allowed documents to be prepared electronically, allowed electronic mail in 1965, decommissioned in 1973

define expansion cards

third party companies creating compatible pieces of hardware for the Altair 8800

What could be considered the forerunners of early computer networks and in what decade did they primarily take place, what did they consist of, who came up with the notion of networking and in what year

timesharing systems in the early 1960s, consisted of teletype terminals connected to a powerful mainframe, J.C.R Licklider in 1963

Who did MIT transfer Whirlwind to, what computer was it then marketed as, how many sites was it spread across, when was this decommissioned

transferred to IBM, now named AN/FSQ-7 computer, spread across 23 sites with 2 at each site, decommissioned in 1980s