There was no doubt about it, point-contact transistors were fidgety. The transistors being made by Bell just didn’t work the same way twice, and on top of that, they were noisy. While one lab at Bell was trying to improve those first type-A transistors, William Shockley was working on a…
The developers and builders of the 701 had created a computer that consisted of two tape units (each with two tape drives), a magnetic drum memory unit, a cathode-ray tube storage unit, an L-shaped arithmetic and control unit with an operator’s panel, a card reader, a printer, a card punch…
The need for a system capable of true flight simulation was one of the outcomes of World War II, and the Navy commissioned MIT to research and develop one that could help them train bomber crews. After seeing the results of the school’s study, Project Whirlwind was created with Navy…
First established in the last quarter of the nineteenth century by four entrepreneurs (Isidore and Montague Gluckstein, Barnett Salmon and Joseph Lyons), J. Lyons & Co. became one of the largest catering and food manufacturing companies in the world. From modest beginnings as supplier of catering to the Newcastle Exhibition…
England’s first commercial computer, the Lyons Electronic Office, solved clerical problems. The president of Lyons Tea Co. had the computer, modeled after the EDSAC, built to solve the problem of daily scheduling production and delivery of cakes to the Lyons tea shops. After the success of the first LEO, Lyons…
The National Bureau of Standards completed its SWAC (Standards Western Automatic Computer) at the Institute for Numerical Analysis in Los Angeles. Rather than testing components like its companion, the SEAC, the SWAC had an objective of computing using already-developed technology.
Diode Logic makes use of the fact that the electronic device known as a diode will conduct an electrical current in one direction, but not in the other. In this manner, the diode acts as an electronic switch.
The beginning of image processing and the construction of the early National Bureau of Standards Electronic Automatic Computer (SEAC) computer made possible the experiments that led to image processing. SEAC was the first electronic computer with an internally stored program in the United States government. It was the first of…
The CSIRAC was Australia’s first digital computer and the fifth stored-program machine in the world. It’s first test was run in November, 1949 and it was built by a team of engineers and scientists led by Trevor Pearcey and Maston Beard. Input was done on punched paper tape instead of…
From Time Magazine’s Builders and Titans: As the eldest son of the president of IBM, Thomas Watson Jr. grew up tortured by self-doubt. He suffered bouts of depression and once burst into tears over the thought that his formidable father wanted him to join IBM and eventually run what was…