WESTCLIFF FILM & VIDEO CLUB
TECHNICAL PAGES
|
|
WESTCLIFF FILM & VIDEO CLUB TECHNICAL PAGES
|
| DVD Compatibility List XLR Connector Wiring | Nowadays, we all take computers for granted but
you maybe surprised to learn that the modern PC has only been with us since
the 1980's
Invented by IBM, the company started trading on the 15th June 1911 as the Computing Tabulating Company (CTR) but it wasn't until the mid 20's that it adopted the name of IBM |
|
||
 |
The Second World War was a turning point for
IBM. Placing its expertise at the disposal of the government, 1944 saw
the development of the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, also called
the Mark 1 This huge monstrosity was over 50ft long and weighed in at 5 tons but it was the first machine capable of calculating additions in less than a second. However, it took around 6 seconds to perform a multiplication! |
|||
| In 1964 IBM introduced its 360 family of computers which enabled customers to mix and match its components. 1980 heralded the introduction of the desktop computer which offered 16kb of memory with one or two floppy drives. This was the first time IBM had out-sourced some of its components which included its Disk Operating System (DOS) which it purchased from a new company called Microsoft. | ||||
 |
The early pioneers of computing recognised that hardware faults were likely, but they thought that programming was a fairly routine clerical exercise with little scope for errors. How wrong they were. The Manchester Baby may have been the world's first 'stored program' computer, but the first practical machine is generally considered to be the EDSAC, built at Cambridge University in 1949. One of the first serious programs written by EDSAC-designer Maurice Wilkes was intended to solve the Airy Equation - a differential equation that crops up in Physics. |
|||
| At the first attempt, the program failed. It was later discovered that there were no less than 20 errors in its 126 lines of code. Here, in his memoirs, Wilkes describes the time at which he realised that errors in software would bug the lives of programmers for ever: "By June 1949, people had begun to realise that it wasn't so easy to get a program right, as had at one time appeared. I remember when this realisation first came on me with full force. The EDSAC was on the top floor of the building and the tape-punching and editing equipment one floor below on a gallery that ran around the room in which the differential analyser was installed. I was trying to get working my first non-trivial program, which was one for the numerical integration of Airy's differential equation. It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that the realisation came over me that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs." • | ||||
THIS PAGE IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION
