The History of Computers & Technology

There was a time when the word "computer" was a title given to a person. These mathematics wizards sat in rooms all day and made calculations, primarily artillery firing tables for the military. Unfortunately, these tables could take weeks to complete. A better solution had to be found, and that solution was the mechanical computer. Today, nearly every American household owns at least one computer, but that evolution didn't happen overnight.

ENIAC

The ENIAC, developed in 1946, was one of the most influential early computers. It filled a large room and required powerful air conditioning in order to control the intense heat given off by its more than 17,000 vacuum tubes. In spite of the many precautions taken, the ENIAC often failed several times per day. Nevertheless, it could perform in 20 seconds mathematical calculations that would have taken a human "computer" as long as 40 hours.

Altair 8800

Invented by MITS, the Altair 8800 was released in 1975. It was the first affordable computer that could be purchased and used in the home. It was met with an astonishing level of demand, selling units by the thousands. The Altair 8800 proved how badly people wanted computers of their own, as it didn't even arrive as a finished product--you had to assemble it yourself, using a diagram, and even had to program it yourself, as there was initially no software. Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen entered the computer industry by adapting a version of the BASIC programming language for the Altair.

Apple II

While MITS was busy selling Altair parts and plans to electronics hobbyists, a revolution was brewing in California. Inventor Steve Wozniak had created a computer with a built-in keyboard and a connection for a monitor, and his partner, visionary Steve Jobs, had managed to sell 200 units. Together, they founded Apple Computer and obtained the funding to put their computer into mass production. The resulting product, launched in 1977 and called the Apple II, was an instant hit. The Apple II was the first mass-produced personal computer, selling an estimated 6 million units during the 16 years in which it was manufactured.

The IBM PC

Founded in 1889, IBM became an empire by building enormous mainframe computers. However, by the end of the 1970s, IBM's mind-set that ordinary people were uninterested in computers was quickly turning the company into a relic of the past. It needed to do something to win back the minds of the people and put upstart Apple in its place. That something was the IBM PC. Although the computer was commercially successful, reverse engineering eventually led to the production of "clones," computers made by other companies that could run software written for the IBM PC. These clones were less expensive and eventually became more popular. By 2004, IBM had exited the personal computer business, unable to compete with the clones of its own design.

Macintosh and Windows

In the early 1980s, Steve Jobs visited PARC, a research lab owned by Xerox, and saw the GUI in action. The GUI, or graphical user interface, allowed a person to interact with a computer using visual icons instead of commands typed on a keyboard. Jobs immediately knew that one day, every computer would work that way. Jobs and Apple began to develop a computer with a GUI-based operating system, which became the Macintosh. However, Bill Gates and Microsoft were not far behind. Gates witnessed an early production model and feared that the GUI might render his company's command-line-based operating system, MS-DOS, obsolete. Microsoft scrambled to produce a GUI-based operating system, and the result was Windows. The Windows and Macintosh operating systems have butted heads ever since, and today, 98 percent of the world's computers utilize one or the other.

References

• An Illustrated History of Computers
• CPU Museum
• Apple Museum