Lecture 3.html (3360B)
1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 3 <html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/><meta name="exporter-version" content="Evernote Mac 7.9 (457563)"/><meta name="created" content="2018-04-16 12:52:22 +0000"/><meta name="source" content="desktop.mac"/><meta name="updated" content="2018-05-30 17:21:57 +0000"/><title>Lecture 3</title></head><body><div>programming was hard, programs were hard to change once written</div><div><br/></div><div>Computing sounds</div><ul><li><div>used for work purposes:</div></li><ul><li><div>old computers like ARRA were built with relays, so you could listen to its sounds to debug</div></li><li><div>sounds were used to announce termination, auditive monitoring, specific program navigation</div></li><li><div>ARRA II had transistors and was silent…so they added a speaker to still get those sounds</div></li></ul><li><div>but unorthodox purposes too:</div></li><ul><li><div>Strachey wrote code that could make EDSAC hum God Save The Queen</div></li><li><div>soon, computers were used to create music, like Jean Michel Jarre did</div></li></ul></ul><div><br/></div><div>Further appropriation was through simple games, like tic-tac-toe and nim</div><div><br/></div><div style="">The language and metaphors</div><ul><li><div>around 1955, computers started appearing in movies/TV</div></li><li><div>the language changed over time</div></li><li><div>new verbs like “program/programming”, “plugging”, “assembling”, “memory"</div></li><li><div>computers were appropriated, people started using old words for concepts related to technology</div></li></ul><div><br/></div><div><span style="font-weight: bold;">IBM “Big Blue” vs everyone else</span></div><div>their tactic was FUD — you need to get this new thing rn</div><div><br/></div><div>IBM & the Seven Dwarves (US):</div><ul><li><div>Burroughs</div></li><li><div>Sperry Rand (formerly Remington Rand)</div></li><li><div>Control Data Corporation</div></li><li><div>Honeywell</div></li><li><div>General Electric</div></li><li><div>RCA</div></li><li><div>NCR</div></li></ul><div><br/></div><div>IBM & the European dwarves</div><ul><li><div>Odhner, St Petersburg (1873), which was cloned everywhere after 1917</div></li><li><div>Atvidaberg Industrie, Sweden, produced Facit. Went bankrupt in 1970 and sold to Electrolux</div></li><li><div>Zuse, Germany. Z4 in 1949, Siemens AG in 1967</div></li><li><div>Mailufterl, Vienna, Austria, 1955.</div></li><li><div>Bull, France, office machinery in 1930, then Gamma 3 (1952), multipurpose Gamma 60 (1958), GE (1962), Honeywell (1968). Had support from the French government.</div></li><li><div>Electrologica, NL. Electrologica in 1956, X1 in 1959, X8 in 1964, bankruptcy in 1966.</div></li><li><div>Regnecentralen, Denmark, 1955. ICL (Intl Computers Limited) in 1989, as merger of 3 companies. </div></li></ul><div><br/></div><div>Why didn’t they succeed? Compared to IBM, they couldn’t sustain the resources. Also, each government wanted to make their own computer, because nationalism is a thing that exists. The money was there because of the Marshall Plan in the US.</div><div><br/></div></body></html>