Did you know that the term "Computer" once meant a profession? And what did people or computers actually do? They computed mathematical problems. Some problems were tedious and error prone. And it is not surprising that people started to develop machines to aid in the effort. The first mechanical computers were actually created to get rid of errors in human computation. Then came tabulating machines and cash registers. It was not until telephone companies were well established that computing machines became practical. First computers were huge mainframes, but soon minicomputers like DEC’s PDP started to appear. The transistor was introduced in 1947, but its usefulness was not truly realized until in 1958 when the integrated circuit was invented. This led to the invention of the microprocessor. Intel, in 1971, marketed the 4004 – and the personal computer revolution started. One of the first Personal Computers was MITS’ Altair. This was a simple device and soon others saw the opportunities. In this lecture we start our coverage of computing and look at some of the early machines and the impact they had.

1. LECTURE L13
RISE OF THE MACHINE

2. Keep this in Mind
Adjacent possible
The S-curve
The Law of Diffusion of Innovation
Arrogance of the Present
The Disruption of Innovation Theory
The Resources, Processes and Values Theory
The Liquid Network

3. History of Computers
History can help us explain many things
We can use our laws and theories to explain
events
Computers are relatively recent and their
development is fairly fast

4. “I can assure you on the highest authority that the data processing is
a fad and won’t last out the year.”
Editor-in-charge of business books, Prentice-Hall 1957

6. dictionary.com

7. “I think there is a world market for maybe five
computers.”
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
72 years ago

8. “There is no reason for any individual to have a
computer in their home.”
- Kenneth Olsen, president and founder of Digital
Equipment Corp., 1977
41 years ago

9. How many computers do you have in your household?
Think about this

10. History
Computing is time consuming and error prone
Demands for computation were increasing with more
organised societies
Industrial revolution and the Napoleonic reforms
Impetus came from Government: Taxing and Defence

11. Efforts to speed calculations started early
Use of logarithmic tables and trigonometry to speed calculations
The Counting Business

12. The Slide Rule by William Oughtred in 1625
Built using logarithms, multiplication of two numbers could
be done easier
a*b = 10^(log(a)+log(b))
Much quicker than manual calculation
The Counting Business

13. Wilhelm Schickard (1592 -1635)
German professor of Hebrew and Astronomy
University of Tüblingen, Germany
Built a calculating machine in 1620s
Documented in letters to Johannes Kepler
1623-24
Early Machines

14. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
French mathematician, physicist, and
religious philosopher
Built an adding machine in1642-44
Tried to commercialize the machine but
labor was too cheap
Early Machines

15. Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)
German mathematician and
philosopher
Built a machine, the Leibniz Wheel that
could multiply and divide
Early Machines

16. Workmanship for building complex machines lacked
In late eighteenth century demand for calculation was growing
Calculations were done by hand
Tedious, slow and error-prone and tables of logarithms were
riddled with errors
History

17. Think about this
How long does it take to compute
707 decimal places of PI?
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862
089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811
174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337
867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245870066
063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469
519415116094330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495
673518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907
021798609437027705392171762931767523846748184676694051320005681271452635608277
85771342757789609173637178721468440901224953430146549585371050792279689258923

19. Think about this
The idea of calculating with steam was to many
impossible - machines could never take over this
human activity
Yet it did. Can you think of a task done today that
will be taken over by machine in the future?

20. Sometimes called Inventor of
the Computer
Wanted to remove the inevitable
human errors from computing
Believed that machines could
replace laborious and
error-prone calculations
Charles Babbage
(1791 – 1871)

21. Machine to compute polynomials
Got grants but efforts were slow
Lack of workmanship of the time
delayed the project
Worked stopped 1833
Difference Engine

22. Babbage started on a new machine in 1834
First industrial revolution
Programmable machine – with
primitive programming language
Input was in punched cards
Run by steam
Analytical engine

23. A Programmable Machine -
General purpose computer
Contained
mill to calculate,
store to keep data,
and formulas
The first programmer
Augusta Ada (1815-1852)
Countess of Lovelace

24. The Cash Register

25. One of the first calculating machines
Developed by James Ritty in 1879 in response to thefts by staff
“The Incorruptible Cashier”
National Cash Register Company – NCR
One of the salesman was Tomas Watson, Sr.
Watson later left for CTR –
Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company
Cash Register

26. Tabulating Machines

27. In the US need for data processing was growing
One application was census taking
US population grew from
17 million in 1840 to
50 million in 1880
It took 1.495 clerks 7 years to
produce the 1880 census
Tabulating Machines

28. Source: Tabulating machine
Herman Hollerith
Tabulating Machine Company – TMC
US Census Bureau awarded Herman Hollerith a contract to produce the
1890 census
Tabulating Machines with punched cards
Successfully finished in 2,5 years
with one-third less cost (claimed)
Tabulating Machines

29. Source: Tabulating machine
Herman Hollerith
Used punched cards
Hollerith cards were in use until 1960s
Tabulating Machines

30. The Business of Data Processing
Even with the growing need for data processing around 1900,
the market for tabulating machines was limited
CRT and TMC merged and would later change the name to
International Business Machines – IBM
Tabulating Machines

31. ▪ Early machines could not compete with manual labor
– The cost was not low enough to disrupt
▪ Workmanship was lacking
▪ Energy to power machines was not available
▪ Computing requirement were modest until 18th century
▪ Babbage failed to build machines despite the resources
▪ Babbage (or rather Ada), had all the ideas for modern computer
Lessons: Early Computing Machines

32. ▪ First practical calculating device was a Cash Register
– Designed due to another problem: theft
– Specialised problem instead of a generic one
▪ Tabulating machines appear with the electricity
▪ First buyers of tabulating machines were governments
– Centralised
Lessons: Early Computing Machines

33. Electronic Brains

34. “I think there is a market for about five computers”
- Tomas Watson, Sr.

35. Foundation of electric computing was laid early
Mechanical computers were not considered practical
Electricity was spreading fast in the beginning of the 20th century
Threat of war is looming in the 1930s
Governments turn to computing for ballistic computations and
code-breaking
Electric Computing

36. Although electricity had entered the equation, it
had done so only as an alternative method of
powering mechanical equipment
Source: Engines that Move Markets
The Prevailing Technology Trap

38. Konrad Zuse (1910-1995)
German Engineer
Built primitive machines, Z1-Z4 based
on relay switches in 1936 – 1944
Used binary system
Designed his own language, Plankalkül
Never received any official support from
war-time Germany unlike the Allies
P2 max (V0[:8.0],V1[:8.0]) => R0[:8.0]
V0[:8.0] => Z1[:8.0]
(Z1[:8.0] < V1[:8.0]) -> V1[:8.0] => Z1[:8.0]
Z1[:8.0] => R0[:8.0]
END
Source: Konrad Zuse
Early Work

41. Location of top-secret code-breaking team
Code-breaking the German coding machine ENIGMA
Bletchley Park

43. Source: Alan Turing, COLOSSUS, Enigma
English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer
Headed the team at Bletchley Park
Worked on the algorithms to break
the ENIGMA code
Bombe Computer based on heuristics
Lead to COLOSSUS – one of the first
electronic computer
Publishes paper in 1936: On Computable Numbers
Alan Turing

44. Source: COLOSSUS
COLOSSUS
Built in England’s Bletchley Park and used by British code
breakers to read encrypted German ENIGMA messages
during World War II
Designed by Alan Turing
Winston Churchill specifically ordered
the destruction of most of the Colossus
machines into 'pieces no bigger than a
man's hand‘
War Machines

45. ENIAC
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
Built by the U.S. Army for the purpose of calculating ballistic firing tables
Used 18.000 vacuum tubes
Designed by John Mauchly and
J. Presper Eckert
The machine was unveiled in 1946 and
was in operation until 1955
Source: EINIAC
War Machines

47. John von Neumann, Von Neumann architecture
Hungarian mathematician
Worked on the Manhattan project and became
involved in Moore’s School ENIAC and EDVAC
projects
Publishes paper - or a memo,
On computer design, 1945
Came to be know as
Von Neumann architecture
John von Neumann

48. Copyright © 2011 Ólafur Andri Ragnarsson
Based on vacuum tubes
War Machines

49. Source: Model of UNIVAC I, c. 1954.
Picture from Smithsonian Institution Source: UNIVAC I
Commercial Computer
5,200 vacuum tubes, weighed 13 tons, consumed 125 kW, and could
perform about 1,905 operations per second running on a 2.25 MHz
clock
Occupied more than 35.5 m²
of floor space
The addition time was 525
microseconds
UNIVAC I

50. United States presidential election of 1952
Eisenhower vs. Stevenson

52. Transistor Era

53. Transistor was invented by William Shockley,
John Bardeen and Walter Brattain in 1948

54. Device use to amplify or switch electronic signals
Huge performance improvement
Smaller
Less energy
More robust
Faster
Transistor

55. Copyright © 2011 Ólafur Andri Ragnarsson
Computers became
faster, larger and more powerful

57. Source: Tyranny of Numbers, Transistor Computer
Computer Engineers have much more flexibility with transistors
Problem was that as the number of components
increased, wiring them together became a problem
Tyranny of Numbers

58. The Integrated circuit

59. Source: Integrated circuit
Introduced in 1958 by two inventors
Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor and Jack Kilby at
Texas Instruments
Transistors could be wired
together in practical way
Mass manufacturing of ICs
The Invention of the Integrated Circuit

60. Adjacent possible
Two inventors at the same time invented the IC
All the enabling technologies are ready and
there is research pressure to solve the tyranny
of numbers

61. Competition Emerges
The Computer Market is born
The main application is data processing, business
applications like payroll, inventory and so on
IBM enters the computer business
Tomas Watson, Jr. launched
IBM System/360 in 1964
Systematically replaced
data processing machines
with mainframe computers

62. Automation

63. Automation – Computers begin to disrupt jobs in 1950
Start to replace jobs
Banks and insurance companies were early adopters
Handling paycheques, payroll that used to require many
clerks to compute
Automation

64. Source: Desk Set (from IMDB)
Hollywood took notice
Desk Set from 1957 with
Spencer Tracey and
Katherine Hepburn
Automation

66. ▪ Electricity was key to computers
– Switching technologies
▪ First electric computers were primitive and fragile
– Low performance
▪ Centralisation
– First computers were in centers
– Expensive, large, run by experts – Priests
Lessons: Early Computing Machines

67. ▪ Giant “Brains”
– Association with human thought
▪ Automation – Disruption
– Companies need fewer clerks to compute
– Tedious jobs eliminated
– Big debate – computer executive had to defend the existence of their
machines
▪ Abstractions few
– Programs were wired in
Lessons: Early Computing Machines

68. Computers in the 1970s

69. The Disruptive Innovation Theory
Resources, Processes and Values Theory
Think About This!

70. IBM 704
IBM System/360
Large computers in data centres
Batch operations
Critical applications
Financial transaction processing
Mainframes

71. Computers were expensive to purchase and maintain
To make it efficient required
multiple users and large data centres
Utility Computing
Time-sharing of expensive equipment
Time-sharing

72. Moore’s Law
Cost of computers went down
Computers became faster and smaller
Normal economics did not apply

73. Cost for new entrants in the computer business was
prohibitive in the 60s
Market for those that did not need complete solution but
could benefit
from using computes
Birth of the Minicomputers
Minicomputers

74. The academic community embraced the
opportunity of minicomputers
Militaries were also early users of minicomputers
Minicomputers

75. Digital Equipment Corporation
Founded in 1957 by Ken Olsen
Launched PDP-1 in 1960
The PDP-8 was the first successful
commercial minicomputer – 1965
Used integrated circuits
Time-sharing allowed multiple
users to use the machines at the
same time
Minicomputers

76. The Disruptive Innovation Theory
Digital used relatively simple,
convenient, low-cost innovation to
create growth and disrupt IBM

77. The Resources, Processes and Values Theory
IBM Was a mainframe company, their
customers wanted mainframes, not
low-performance mini computers

78. ▪ IBM, industry’s first leader, sold mainframe computers to the
central accounting and data processing departments of large
organizations
▪ The emergence of the minicomputer represented disruptive
technology to IBM and competitors
▪ Their customers had no use for it: it promised lower, not higher
margins
▪ As a result the mainframe makers ignored it for years
Clayton M. Christensen: The Innovator’s Dilemma
Lessons: Early Computing Machines

79. ▪ This allowed new entrants: DEC, Data General, Prime, Wang
and Nixdorf – to create and dominate the minicomputer market
▪ IBM entered the minicomputer market when it was
performance competitive to the needs of their customers
▪ The history repeated itself
Clayton M. Christensen: The Innovator’s Dilemma
Lessons: Early Computing Machines

82. May 25, 1961
Status:
Mainframe era, mini computer early days
Transistor era, integrated circuits just invented
Programming languages new
The World in 1961

83. “The space program badly needed the things the
integrated circuit could provide.”
- Jack St. Clair Kilby

84. Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore founded Intel
Semiconductor company
Initial focus was on memory chips
There was still enormous potential market for calculations
The vision of Charles Babbage was still not realised but the
mainframe market met the needs of governments and large
organisations
Semiconductor Industry is Born

85. Intel introduced the first microprocessor 4004 in 1971
8008 in 1972, 8080 in 1974 and 8088 in 1979
The beginning of the Personal Computer, the PC
The Microprocessor

86. Intel was really reluctant to go into the microchip business
No market existed
No demand at the time
Intel created 4004 for another company
They would not market chips, but built them when ordered
The company cancelled the order and Intel was forced to offer
them for sale
The Microprocessor

87. The Calculator

88. Advances in technology introduced the
desktop calculator
The market grew fast
With advances, the calculators became more powerful and smaller
Pocket calculators
Became widespread in the 70s
Replaced the slide rule after 374 years
The Calculator

89. Many companies start to make Calculators
Casio, Sharp, Canon, HP, MITS and more
In Europe, Aristo, Denner & Pape, a slide rule manufacturer
since 1872, also entered the market in 1972
Price dropped fast: $400 in 1972, $200, $100 and $50 in 1974
Companies like MITS need to find new ways of revenues
The Calculator

90. Think about this!
All mini-computer companies had
what it would take to go into small
scale products – they even had
people proposing the idea, but they
did not!

91. The Personal Computer

92. MITS marketed Altair in 1975
Came with Intel 8080
Users needed to assemble the machine themselves
No keyboard, no screen, no printer
256 byte of RAM, programmed with switches
Included BASIC interpreter from Microsoft
Written by Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Cost of $397 appealed to computer enthusiasts
The Personal Computer

93. Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Wrote a BASIC interpreter
for the Altair
Founded a company they called
Micro-Soft
Mircosoft

94. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
Show the Apple I in the Palo Alto
Homebrew Computer Club in 1976
Apple II was marketed 1977 and became a huge
success - “Apple growth”
Hewlett-Packard had turned
Wozniak down – no market
Apple

95. “The Personal Computer will fall flat on its face in business.”
- Ken Olsen

96. Existing computer companies were not interested in PCs
DEC, HP, IBM, and Control Data did not see a business model
HP rejected a proposal from Steve Wozniak
DEC rejected a proposal from David Ahl
Support for machines like this was considered impossible
Consequence:
The development of the PC had to begin with hobbyists
Computer Companies

98. The Liquid Network
Think about this

99. The early computers were all
about building the right
hardware – this ignored what
important element?

100. SOFTWARE

101. L14 From the Internet to Blockchain
The Internet was a primitive network owned by no one,
based on the TCP/IP standard, and at the same time big
companies where promoting their networks
Yet the Internet won…
Next