Lecture 3.md (2120B)
1 +++ 2 title = "Lecture 3" 3 +++ 4 # Lecture 3 5 6 programming was hard, programs were hard to change once written 7 8 Computing sounds 9 10 - used for work purposes: 11 - old computers like ARRA were built with relays, so you could listen to its sounds to debug 12 - sounds were used to announce termination, auditive monitoring, specific program navigation 13 - ARRA II had transistors and was silent…so they added a speaker to still get those sounds 14 - but unorthodox purposes too: 15 - Strachey wrote code that could make EDSAC hum God Save The Queen 16 - soon, computers were used to create music, like Jean Michel Jarre did 17 18 Further appropriation was through simple games, like tic-tac-toe and nim 19 20 The language and metaphors 21 22 - around 1955, computers started appearing in movies/TV 23 - the language changed over time 24 - new verbs like “program/programming”, “plugging”, “assembling”, “memory" 25 - computers were appropriated, people started using old words for concepts related to technology 26 27 ## IBM “Big Blue” vs everyone else 28 their tactic was FUD — you need to get this new thing rn 29 30 IBM & the Seven Dwarves (US): 31 32 - Burroughs 33 - Sperry Rand (formerly Remington Rand) 34 - Control Data Corporation 35 - Honeywell 36 - General Electric 37 - RCA 38 - NCR 39 40 IBM & the European dwarves 41 42 - Odhner, St Petersburg (1873), which was cloned everywhere after 1917 43 - Atvidaberg Industrie, Sweden, produced Facit. Went bankrupt in 1970 and sold to Electrolux 44 - Zuse, Germany. Z4 in 1949, Siemens AG in 1967 45 - Mailufterl, Vienna, Austria, 1955. 46 - Bull, France, office machinery in 1930, then Gamma 3 (1952), multipurpose Gamma 60 (1958), GE (1962), Honeywell (1968). Had support from the French government. 47 - Electrologica, NL. Electrologica in 1956, X1 in 1959, X8 in 1964, bankruptcy in 1966. 48 - Regnecentralen, Denmark, 1955. ICL (Intl Computers Limited) in 1989, as merger of 3 companies. 49 50 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.