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Developing the Computer

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The History of Visual Magic in Computers

Abstract

In order to create the amazing images, models, and special effects seen in the cinema, on TV, in virtualization rooms, and in video games you need powerful computers. Before we could develop computers, as we know them today, we had to figure out the mechanics of computing, and that began with clocks, and navigation systems. Mechanical toys and automatons that mimicked human and animal behavior preceded the industrial revolution. Mechanical toys led to automatic loom, which led to punch cards. The next development was electromechanical relays developed for switching large electrical currents and telephone lines. And relays found their into the earliest form of digital computers as binary switches. From there it was evolution of technology; vacuum tubes (valves), the transistor, the integrated circuit, and the massive multiprocessor computers available in home PCs. The cost and size of the computers have been getting smaller ever since their introduction, while the performance and storage capacity has been increasing. That trend shows no signs of stopping and the history that written today will seem just as quaint and the machines as enormous as the computers from a few decades ago do now.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In electronics, a flip-flop or latch is a circuit that has two stable states and can be used to store state information.

  2. 2.

    A ring counter is a circular shift register which is initiated such that only one of its flip-flops is the state one while others are in their zero states.

  3. 3.

    Adams later founded Adams Associates (1959), and became the proprietor of Key Data (1964).

  4. 4.

    Co-founder of Adams Associate, and later founder of Comparative Visual Assessments Inc., and inventor of a patented methodology1 for utilizing vector analysis to produce graphic diagrams (“Vectorgrams”) to depict the strengths and weaknesses of comparative candidate products, subjects or people.

  5. 5.

    3M – 3MB RAM, 3Mpixell display, and 3MIPS processor.

  6. 6.

    Brennan [9] says the first 610 prototype was “completed at Watson Lab in 1948”. Grosch [59] says “Lentz’s 610 did not exist even in prototype when I left in 1951 – if ‘under wraps’, the wrapping was much later”. According to Bashe [4], the first engineering model of the Auto-Point Computer was operational in 1954, but release was delayed by IBM’s rollout of its 650 and 700-series computers. The 610 was IBM’s second-to-last vacuum tube computer.

  7. 7.

    The term, Pixel, and its origin are explained in Chap. 5, Development of the Display.

  8. 8.

    RAND Corporation, an independent, nonprofit organization, is the outgrowth of the World War II Project RAND. It formed in May 1948 from the Douglas Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, California, and adopted its name from a contraction of the term research and development.

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  1. Jon Peddie Research, Tiburon, CA, USA

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Appendix

Appendix

Here are listed items that may be useful in understanding more about the industry and technology.

If you are interested in the history of computers, and old computers in general here are some places to search.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/

http://www.blinkenlights.com/

http://www.computerhistory.org/explore/

http://www.computerhope.com/history/

http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/History.htm

http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/lessons.html

http://www.cbi.umn.edu/collections/index.html

5.1.1 Home and Personal Computers

Table A.1 A listing of old computers (Old Computers.net, created by Steven Stengel)
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Fig. 5.62
figure 000562

Evolution of Intel processors (©Intel Corporation)

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Peddie, J. (2013). Developing the Computer. In: The History of Visual Magic in Computers. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4932-3_5

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