Computer History

           Part 1 - Introduction:

My usual meander or peregrination today is so-on with my computer series.   I’m going to talk about more-fun modern inventions today.   Just a hint:   No, I’m not interested about who invented Hand-writing pens or petroleum (Oil).

I may be younger or older but I’ll start with a few facts anyway.  The U.S.  military (as usual) had just come up with the trinket machine that would make it easier and more efficient for killing humans.  I thought that was somehow a cool idea.  There must be other things that it could do…Hmmm.    There were no PC’s then and they’re not needed anymore either.  My brilliant father who is still an engineer told me to go to school to get a good job.  He told me that I would be wasting my time with these new electrical complications because they wouldn’t go anywhere.  Well, you know what kids will do - exactly what their parents wanted you to avoid.     What reason our military wanted the computer is obvious.  Using that same method, I realized that you could advertise anything or advertise anything with partially nude women.  Am I right?     I started out a little bit differently.  Eventually having a computer was required to attend any school.  I just invented my own software to type my papers on a public electric typewriter.  (My ancient college had a PDP-11 and DEC 10.)  Hot damn.  There was no internet but we learned how to communicate with people all over the country with ARPANET.  Just imagine….     I’ll get into some more detailed computer’s development in a later tutorial.  This time I’ll just stick to the basic techno logistic method of doing anything with these new machines.

ENIAC's Mother Nature's Personal Version (PC)

          Description of Early Computer Developement

Occsionally I do use my brain.  Otherwise, don’t count on it – for me or anyone. Instead I was interested in this puzzle:   CRT →→ X-Ray & TV →→ PNP

Personal Version ENIAC's Mother Nature's

    We liked some Germans and Americans because they seemed to invent lot of dangerous things.   In 1875, an American by the name of George Carey^[1] invented what he, as well as the rest of this world called a phototube.  The person responsible for inventing anything got to name it anything they wanted.  Later, this little contraption became known as the world’s encompassing “vacuum tube”.  That was the reason that these became important and necessary in various instruments that required switches or amplifiers.     Early in the 20^th century, the German named Wilhelm invented a machine that produced what he, appropriately, named the Röntgen^[2] rays.  I lived in Hawaii and we didn’t like wearing shoes in the 50’s but the rest of America quickly fit their new shoes with this new gadget.  `     I knew where I met these new items.  I was in a concert called Woodstock in 1969 at a big open space in the middle of nowhere with some great rock’n’roll amplifiers for sounds that everyone could hear.  Using these tube powered amplifiers were tricky while they were operated in the rain.      I thought that these new things might be useful in the next few years.  (What things specifically?)

How on earth would we evolve into preventing ourselves from being x-rayed by medical machines or by our new television contraptions? I will continue with my computer story.     These things[3] worked kinda like light bulbs that could be screwed into any lamp and switched on to alight the world.  The ensuing problem with testing tubes resulting in installation of washing machine sized testers in every grocery or pharmacy stores.

          Major Computer Developement.  We wanted "Smaller" and "Faster"

This is where modern things like television, x-rays or computers began.  When things began with the TV, there were still luxury moving parts like the channel selector dial-knob.  On the other hand there aren’t any movable items composing the “brains” of any computer.  How was this theory accomplished?     All of the pieces in that puzzle previously mentioned have no moving parts.  A wire doesn’t have to move to obtain electricity for your light bulb.  As you can see, those original computers were physically very large.

I have mentioned the Bell Company in previous blogs.  Someone mentioned who worked as the boss or coordinator of this little crew in the Bell labs.  Maybe the future CEO.  But in circa 1947 there were the three guys in that photo who did work in there pretty much doing whatever they wanted to.  As you can see in the photo, they weren’t playing checkers so my guess is that they headed out to RadioShack which (as early as 1921) was selling spare electronic parts quite affordably. They were John Bardeen with a Ph.D.  in Princeton mathematics and physics, Walter Brattain a PhD expert in the nature of atomic anything and William

Larry, Moe & Curly?[4]

Shockley a PhD expert of being the Boss of the new Semiconductor

amplifier amazing electronic part that was supposed to be good for something.[5] What will the next Nobel Prize in Physics be granted for?     Everyone in this business later discovered that a beach is made from the seventh biggest amount that exists in the universe (as far as we know) so we started out with the following gadgets.  The fundamental electronic parts in all computers are lucid and therefore quite is comprehensible.[11]s

All of the pieces in that puzzle previously mentioned have no moving parts.  A wire doesn’t have to move to obtain electricity for your light bulb.  As you can see, those original computers were physically very large.  Someone finally figured out that electricity doesn’t move very fast so the better way to make computers faster is to make them smaller.      Wow! A transistor is small and electricity in that small item does move very quickly.

    Of course I have strange thoughts at any time.  That hasn’t stopped yet.  The next crazy possibilities are available in Part II.

Refs:

[1] In 1875, American, G.R. Carey invented the phototube. [2] Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen [3] how tubes work in he 50’s [4]Their correct and/or appropriate ID’s are in the other accompanying text. [5] John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley & Definitions of Transisor [6]How do you make CPUs?  more transistors than any chip [7] How computer (containing transistor) chips made,manufactured [8]Transistors are made of Beach Sand  http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/14/silicon [9] Germanium   http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele032.html [10]Our brain contains around 86-100 billion   http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/feb/28/how-many-neurons-human-brain & http://psychology.about.com/od/biopsychology/f/how-many-neurons-in-the-brain.htm [11]I remember Motorola but there were some earlier. http://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/about/company-overview/history/timeline.html & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control [12] Where do we get germanium these days [13] http://www.explainthatstuff.com/howtransistorswork.html [14] HAL or maybe (IBM) [15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_%28film%29 [16]Maybe what Frank Herbert said in the book Dune [17]Old blog Stephen Hawking& Albert Einstein http://jayfreebish.blogspot.com/2015/10/einstein-or-schroeder.html [99]entropy a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder