boxchronicles.com – Page 19 – tech that changed the world

Larry Roberts

Larry Roberts was an integral part of the formation of ARPANet as one of it’s chief designers, and was also the first to connect two computers to one another via dedicated phone lines, proving that such connections were possible. After receiving a PhD from MIT , he heard the inspiring…

Acoustically Coupled Modem

Inventions

The acoustically coupled modem, which sends digital data over phone lines as audio pulses, was invented in the early 1960’s, but it wasn’t until John Van Geen at the Stanford Research Institute improved the device that it became available for general use. Phone companies at this time did not allow…

SIMULA

Code

The SIMULA programming language was designed and built by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard at the Norwegian Computing Centre (NCC) in Oslo between 1962 and 1967. It was originally designed and implemented as a language for discrete event simulation, but was later expanded and reimplemented as a full scale general…

Object Oriented Programming

Code

In recent years, object-oriented programming has emerged as the dominant computer programming style, and object-oriented languages such as C++ and Java enjoy wide use in academia and industry. Object-oriented languages dominate procedural languages in certain software-engineering categories, but not in others. Further progress may involve adapting and reintroducing principles that…

CDC 6600

Computers

The CDC 6600 by Control Data Corporation is believed to have been the first computer to be designated as a supercomputer, offering the fastest clock speed for its day (100 nanoseconds). It was one of the first computers to use Freon refrigerant cooling and as also the first commercial computer…

SABRE

Computers

In the late 1950s, IBM teamed with American Airlines to devise a teleprocessing solution — SABRE. When fully implemented, SABRE established a dominant design for reservations processing that was copied throughout the airline industry. Functional enhancements transformed SABRE from a reservations system into a passenger services system that supported many…

BASIC

Code

BASIC (Beginner’s All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a system developed at Dartmouth College in 1964 under the directory of J. Kemeny and T. Kurtz. It was implemented for the G.E.225. It was meant to be a very simple language to learn and also one that would be easy to…

Tandy Corporation

Companies

Tandy was originally formed in 1919 by Norton Hinckley and Dave L. Tandy, and was known as the Hinckley-Tandy Leather Company. In 1963 it bought Radio Shack, paving the way for the company to be part of the computer revolution in the 1970s. In 1977 it introduced the TRS-80 to…

oNLine System (NLS)

Computers

The oNLine System, or NLS, was created by Douglas Englebart and the Augmentation Research Center team at Stanford Research Institute. The computer system was years ahead of it’s time, designed as a collaboration system, it employed the use of hypertext, the mouse, video monitors, and many other aspects of today’s…

The First Mouse

Inventions

The first computer mouse was developed by Doug Englebart in 1963 at Stanford Research Institute. He had been creating the oN-Line System, or NLS, a hardware and software system that incorporated many of the concepts of today’s modern computers. Using two gear wheels at perpindicular positions, it allowed movement of…

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