The LISP programming language was invented by John McCarthy at MIT in 1958. Since it’s inception, it has been closely related with artificial intelligence research. It used many principles from the first AI language, Information Processing Language. He published a paper showing that one could build an entire language using…
Bolt, Beranek and Newman was one of the pioneer companies in the world of computers. Two MIT professors, Richard Bolt and Leo Beranek, started up a small acoustical consulting company in 1948. With the addition of Robert Newman, Bolt Baranek and Newman or BBN, was born. Throughout the 1950s, the…
In 1958, researchers at Bell Telephone Labs invent the modem, a device that converts data from computers to the phone line and back again. This switching of digital to analog makes computer networks possible. At the time there was a desire to connect to distant computers, and the obvious choice…
From A Brief History of Lucent Technologies On Feb. 14, 1876 Elisha Gray lost his race to invent the telephone; Alexander Graham Bell put in a patent application just hours before Gray filed one. Gray, however, had already left his mark on telephony seven years before when, in 1869, he…
Transistors had become commonplace in everything from radios to phones to computers, and now manufacturers wanted something even better. Sure, transistors were smaller than vacuum tubes, but for some of the newest electronics, they weren’t small enough. One day in late July, Jack Kilby was sitting alone at Texas Instruments….
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…
In 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…
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…
There 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…
The Bendix G-15 was a vacuum tube computer produced by the Bendix Corporation in 1956. It was unique for its time because of its size and pricing compared to other computers of the era. At only 5 x 3 feet and a cost of about $60,000 for a working model,…