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| The Comparative Analysis Of The History Of The Computer Science And The Computer Engineering In The USA And UkraineThe Comparative Analysis Of The History Of The Computer Science And The Computer Engineering In The USA And UkraineThe Comparative Analysis Of The History Of The Computer Science And The HOWARD H. AIKEN AND THE COMPUTER It is not proposed to discuss here the origins and significance of the
stored program. Nor I wish to deal with the related problem of whether the
machines before the stored program were or were not “computers”. This
subject is complicated by the confusion in actual names given to machines. OPERATION OF THE ENIAC.
Some weeks before his death Aiken had made another prediction. He pointed out that hardware considerations alone did not give a true picture of computer costs. As hardware has become cheaper, software has been apt to get more expensive. And then he gave us his final prediction: “The time will come”, he said, “when manufacturers will gave away hardware in order to sell software”. Time alone will tell whether or not this was his final look ahead into the future. DEVELOPMENT OF COMPUTERS IN THE USA Although the work at Xerox PARC was crucial, it was not the spark that took To this day, researchers at Xerox and elsewhere pooh-pooh the Altair as too
primitive to have made use of the technology they felt was needed to bring Researchers today are proceeding in the same spirit that motivated Kay and
his Xerox PARC colleagues in the 1970s: to make information more accessible
to ordinary people. But a look into today's research labs reveals very
little that resembles what we think of now as a PC. For one thing,
researchers seem eager to abandon the keyboard and monitor that are the It is impossible to predict the invention that, like the Altair, crystallize new approaches in a way that captures people's imagination. Top 20 computer systems
There once was a time when you could buy a top-of-the-line computer for Based on Intel`s 8-bit 8080 processor, the Altair 8800 kit included 256
bytes of memory (upgradable, of course) and a toggle-switch-and-LED front
panel. For amenities such as keyboard, video terminals, and storage
devices, you had to go to one of the companies that sprang up to support
the Altair with expansion cards. In 1975, MITS offered 4- and 8-KB Altair
versions of BASIC, the first product developed by Bill Gates` and Paul If the personal computer hobbyists movement was simmering, 1975 saw it come to a boil with the introduction of the Altair 8800.
Those of you who think of the IBM PC as the quintessential business computers may be in for a surprise: The Apple II (together with VisiCalc) was what really made people to look at personal computers as business tools, not just toys. The Apple II debuted at the first West Coast Computer Fair in San Francisco in 1977. With built-in keyboard, graphics display, eight readily accessible expansion slots, and BASIC built-into ROM, the Apple II was actually easy to use. Some of its innovations, like built-in high-resolution color graphics and a high-level language with graphics commands, are still extraordinary features in desk top machines. With a 6502 CPU, 16 KB of RAM, a 16-KB ROM, a cassette interface that never really worked well (most Apple It ended up with the floppy drive the was announced in 1978), and color graphics, the Apple II sold for $1298.
Also introduced at the first West Coast Computer Fair, Commondore`s PET The keyboard and small monochrome display both fit in the same one-piece
unit. Like the Apple II, the PET ran on MOS Technology's 6502. Its $795
price, key to the Pet's popularity supplied only 4 KB of RAM but included a
built-in cassette tape drive for data storage and 8-KB version of Microsoft
Remember the Trash 80? Sold at local Radio Shack stores in your choice of color (Mercedes Silver), the TRS-80 was the first ready-to-go computer to use Zilog`s Z80 processor. The base unit was essentially a thick keyboard with 4 KB of RAM and 4 KB of Much of the first software for this system was distributed on audiocassettes played in from Radio Shack cassette recorders.
By the end of the 1970s, garage start-ups were pass. Fortunately there were other entrepreneurial possibilities. Take Adam Osborne, for example. He sold Osborne Books to McGraw-Hill and started Osborne Computer. Its first product, the 24-pound Osborne 1 Portable, boasted a low price of $1795. More important, Osborne established the practice of bundling software - in
spades. The Osborne 1 came with nearly $1500 worth of programs: WordStar, Business was looking good until Osborne preannounced its next version while
sitting on a warehouse full of Osborne 1S. Oops. Reorganization under
This is the system that launched a thousand innovations in 1981. The work of some of the best people at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) went into it. Several of these - the mouse and a desktop GUI with icons - showed up two years later in Apple`s Lisa and Macintosh computers. The Star wasn't what you would call a commercial success, however. The main problem seemed to be how much it cost. It would be nice to believe that someone shifted a decimal point somewhere: The pricing started at $50,000.
Irony of ironies that someone at mainframe-centric IBM recognized the business potential in personal computers. The result was in 1981 landmark announcement of the IBM PC. Thanks to an open architecture, IBM's clout, and Lotus 1-2-3 (announced one year later), the PC and its progeny made business micros legitimate and transformed the personal computer world. The PC used Intel`s 16-bit 8088, and for $3000, it came with 64 KB of RAM and a 51/4-inch floppy drive. The printer adapter and monochrome monitor were extras, as was the color graphics adapter.
Compaq's Portable almost single-handedly created the PC clone market.
Years before PC-compatible subnotebook computers, Radio Shack came out with a book-size portable with a combination of features, battery life, weight, and price that is still unbeatable. (Of course, the Z80-based Model 100 didn't have to run Windows.) The $800 Model 100 had only an 8-row by 40-column reflective LCD (large at the time) but supplied ROM-based applications (including text editor, communications program, and BASIC interpreter), a built-in modem, I/O ports, nonvolatile RAM, and a great keyboard. Wieghing under 4 pounds, and with a battery life measured in weeks (on four AA batteries), the Model 100 quickly became the first popular laptop, especially among journalists. With its battery-backed RAM, the Model 100 was always in standby mode, ready to take notes, write a report, or go on-line. NEC`s PC 8201 was essentially the same Kyocera-manufectured system.
Whether you saw it as a seductive invitation to personal computing or a cop-
out to wimps who were afraid of a command line, Apple`s Macintosh and its The original Macintosh used Motorola's 16-bit 68000 microprocessor. At
George Orwell didn't foresee the AT in 1984. Maybe it was because Big Blue,
not Big Brother, was playing its cards close to its chest. The IBM AT set
new standards for performance and storage capacity. Intel`s blazingly fast New 16-bit expansion slots meant new (and faster) expansion cards but
maintained downward compatibility with old 8-bit cards. These hardware
changes and new high-density 1.2-MB floppy drives meant a new version of PC- The price for an AT with 512 KB of RAM, a serial/parallel adapter, a high- density floppy drive, and a 20-MB hard drive was well over $5000 - but much less than what the pundits expected.
The Amiga introduced the world to multimedia. Although it cost only $1200, the 68000-based Amiga 1000 did graphics, sound, and video well enough that many broadcast professionals adopted it for special effects. Its sophisticated multimedia hardware design was complex for a personal computer, as was its multitasking, windowing OS.
While IBM was busy developing (would “wasting time on” be a better phrase?) proprietary Micro Channel PS/2 system, clone vendors ALR and Compaq wrestled away control of the x86 architecture and introduced the first 386- based systems, the Access 386 and Deskpro 386. Both systems maintained backward compatibility with the 286-based AT. Compaq's Deskpro 386 had a further performance innovation in its Flex bus
architecture. Compaq split the x86 external bus into two separate buses: a
high-speed local bus to support memory chips fast enough for the 16-MHz
When you first looked at the Macintosh II, you may have said, “But it looks just like a PC. ”You would have been right. Apple decided it was wiser to give users a case they could open so they could upgrade it themselves. The monitor in its 68020-powered machine was a separate unit that typically sat on top of the CPU case.
UNIX had never been easy to use , and only now, 10 years later, are we getting back to that level. Unfortunately, Steve Job's cube never developed the software base it needed for long-term survival. Nonetheless, it survived as an inspiration for future workstations. Priced at less than $10,000, the elegant Nextstation came with a 25-MHz
Necks UltraLite is the portable that put subnotebook into the lexicon. Like Fans liked the 4.4-pound UltraLite for its trim size and portability, but
it really needed one of today's tiny hard drives. It used battery-backed Foreshadowing PCMCIA, the UltraLite had a socket that accepted credit-card-
size ROM cards holding popular applications like WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-
It wasn't the first RISK workstation, nor even the first Sun system to use The SparcStation 1 also introduced S-Bus, Sun's proprietary 32-bit synchronous bus, which ran at the same 20-MHz speed as the CPU.
Sometimes, when IBM decides to do something, it does it right.(Other times... Well, remember the PC jr.?)The RS/6000 allowed IBM to enter the workstation market. The RS/6000`s RISK processor chip set (RIOS) racked up speed records and introduced many to term suprscalar. But its price was more than competitive. IBM pushed third-party software support, and as a result, many desktop publishing, CAD, and scientific applications ported to the RS/6000, running under AIX, IBM's UNIX. A shrunken version of the multichip RS/6000 architecture serves as the basis for the single-chip PowerPC, the non-x86-compatible processor with the best chance of competing with Intel.
Not many companies have made the transition from CISC to RISK this well.
It is not often anymore that a new computer inspires gee-whiz sentiment, but IBM's Butterfly subnotebook does, with its marvelous expanding keyboard. The 701C`s two-part keyboard solves the last major piece in the puzzle of building of usable subnotebook: how to provide comfortable touch- typing.(OK, so the floppy drive is sill external.) With a full-size keyboard and a 10.4-inch screen, the 4.5-pound 701C compares favorably with full-size notebooks. Battery life is good, too. The development of computers in ukraine and the former USSR Up to the beginning of the 1950s there were only small productive capacities which specialized in the producing accounting and account- perforating (punching) machines. The electronic numerical computer engineering was only arising and the productive capacities for it were close to the naught. The first serious steps in the development of production base were made
initially in the late 1950s when the work on creating the first industry
samples of the electronic counting machines was finished and there were
created M-20, “Ural-1”, “Minsk-1”, which together with their semi-conductor
successors (M-220, “Ural-11-14”, “Minsk-22” and “Minsk-32”) created in the In the 1960s the science-research and assembling base was enlarged. As the result of this measures, all researches connected with creating and putting into the serial production of semi-conductor electronic computing machines were almost finished. That allowed to stop the production of the first generation machines beginning from the 1964. Next decades the whole branch of the computer engineering had been created. Kiev the homecity of mesm S.A.Lebedev was proposed to head the Institute of Energetics in Kiev. After
a year; when the Institute of was divided into two departments: the
electronical one and the department of heat-and-power engineering, Lebedev
became the director of the first one. He also added his laboratory of
analogue computation to the already existing ones of the electronical type. In autumn 1951 the machine executed a complex program rather stabile.
Finally all the tests were over and on December, 15 the MESM was put into operation. If to remember those short terms the MESM was projected, assembled, and
debugged - in two years - and taking into consideration that only 12 people As life have showed the foundations of the computer-building laid by or the years of “might-have-been hopes”
The computerization of national economy was considered as one of the most essential tasks. The decision to create the United system of computers - the machines of new generation on integrals. The USA were the first to create the families of computers. In 1963-64 the A decision concerning the third generation of computers (their structure and architecture) was to be made in the USSR in the late 60s. But instead of making the decision based on the scientific grounds
concerning the future of the United system of computers the Ministry of Despite the fact that there were enough grounds for thinking the 70s would
bring new big progresses, those years were the step back due to the fault
way dictated by the highest authorities from above. in the usa and ukraine It also should be noticed that in America they paid more attention to the development of computers for civil and later personal use. But in Ukraine the attention was mainly focused on the military and industrial needs. Another interesting aspect of the Ukrainian computer development was the
process of the 70s when “sovietizing” of the IBM-360 system became the
first step on the way of weakening of positions achieved by the Soviet
machinery construction the first two decades of its development. The next
step that led to the further lag was the mindless copying by the SU The natural final stage was buying in enormous quantities of foreign computers last years and pressing to the deep background our domestic researches, and developments, and the computer-building industry on the whole. Another interesting aspect of the Ukrainian computer development was the
process of the 70s when the “sovietising” of the IBM-360 system became the
first step on the way of weakening of positions, achieved by the Soviet
machinery construction of the first two decades of its development. The
next step that led to the further lag was the mindless copying of the next CONCLUSION Having analyzed the development of computer science in two countries I have found some similar and some distinctive features in the arising of computers. First of all, I would like to say that at the first stages the two countries rubbed shoulders with each other. But then, at a certain stage the USSR was sadly mistaken having copied the IBM-360 out of date technology. Estimating the discussion of possible ways of the computer technique development in the former USSR in late 1960s - early 1970s from the today point of view it can be noticed that we have chosen a worse if not the worst one. The only progressive way was to base on our domestic researches and to collaborate with the west-European companies in working out the new generation of machines. Thus we would reach the world level of production, and we would have a real base for the further development together with leading European companies. Unfortunately the last twenty years may be called the years of “unrealized possibilities”. Today it is still possible to change the situation; but tomorrow it will be too late. Will the new times come? Will there be a new renaissance of science, engineering and national economy as it was in the post-war period? Only one thing remains for us - that is to wait, to hope and to do our best to reach the final goal. bibliography: 1. Stephen G. Nash “A History of Scientific Computing”, ACM Press History Series, New York, 1990. 2. The America House Pro-Quest Database: “Byte” Magazine, September, 1995. 3. William Aspray, Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series in the History of Computing 7, Los Angeles, 1985. 4. D.J.Frailey “Computer Architecture” in Encyclopedia of Computer Science. 5. Stan Augarten “Bit by Bit: An Illustrated History of Computers”, New York, 1984. 6. Michael R. Williams “A History of Computing Technology”, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1985. |
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