Category Archives: 1957

ARPA

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In response to the arrival of the Soviet made satellite Sputnik in orbit, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). They’re given free reign to develop advanced technology with long term potential. Eventually the Internet would form from the ARPANet project.

Eisenhower, a progressive president who believed in technology and science, originally gave ARPA responsibility over all space and missile programs, and their efforts were geared toward space related military technology. However, the development of NASA steals this thunder from ARPA, who become a general purpose R&D agency. Eventually it becomes a part of the computer revolution when it formulates the basic architecture of modern networks and communications.

Control Data Corporation

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cdclogoIn 1957, Seymour Cray and William Norris form the Control Data Corp (CDC), to design and build supercomputers. Intended to be used for scientific calculation, many considered it a risky endeavor. Originally working for Sperry Rand designing the successors to the UNIVAC, Cray’s desire to push the limits of computing conflicted with the company and he decided to form his own.

CDC began designing high volume, high speed, accurate machines geared toward select customers who would need such number- crunching power. The first, the 1604 is created in 1958. Following it up was the CDC 6600, the fastest, most powerful of it’s time, turning CDC into an industry giant. In 1972, Cray formed Cray Research, Inc. which produces the Cray-1 in 1976. It is far more powerful than any of it’s slower cousins, it performs 240 million calculations per second.

Westinghouse

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From Westinghouse’s Company History:

It began in the Age of Steam, a 19th century success story that resonates in the 21st century. George Westinghouse, a spunky teenager with a head full of ideas, seizes opportunity after opportunity to make technology better, faster, more efficient. In the process, he helps improve the way people live. He starts a company, then another, then dozens of them. His ventures survive him and evolve through decade after turbulent decade into forms he couldn’t have predicted, but would no doubt have understood.

Primary research and technology development activities at Westinghouse occur in our Science and Technology Department, located at the George Westinghouse Research & Technology Park in Churchill, Pennsylvania. Current research focuses on five major areas: energy systems, chemical processing, materials and corrosion, materials reliability, and decision analysis.

Many of the scientists and engineers in the Science and Technology Department are among the world’s leading experts in their fields. Combining this expertise with that of the BNFL research and technology group helps Westinghouse advance nuclear power technology for the benefit of our customers and electricity users worldwide.

FORTRAN

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fortran-2There is a debate about who designed the first high-level programming language, i.e. the first one to be compiled. FORTRAN is usually credited, Knuth and Pardo in 1977 credit Alick E. Glennie for his Autocode compiler for the Manchester I computer in 1952. Backus gives credit to Laning and Zierler at MIT who in 1953 built an algebraic translator for the MIT Whirlwind computer.

At IBM in 1954, John Backus and a group started to design the FORmula TRANslator System, or FORTRAN. Computers were slow and unreliable and all programming was done in machine or assembly code. Work was completed in 1957 and the implementation supports what is called FORTRAN I. The authors claimed that the resulting code would be as efficient as handcrafted machine code. FORTRAN included many features that were specific to the IBM 704, the first computer on which it was implemented.

FORTRAN II followed in 1958. It included separate compilation of subroutines. FORTRAN III was short-lived, and FORTRAN IV followed in 1962. This remained the standard until the ANSI FORTRAN standard was produced in 1977. The latest is FORTRAN 90, summarized in ANSI X3.198-1992. For many years, FORTRAN dominated programming, and was described as the lingua franca, or common tongue, for computer programmers.