A History of Modern Computing

452 Pages·2003·4.266 MB·English

by  Paul E. Ceruzzi

A History of Modern Computing
History of Computing
I. Bernard Cohen and William Aspray, editors
William Aspray,Johnvon NeumannandtheOrigins ofModernComputing
CharlesJ.Bashe,LyleR.Johnson,JohnH.Palmer,andEmersonW.Pugh,IBM’s
Early Computers
MartinCampbell-Kelly,AHistoryoftheSoftwareIndustry:FromAirlineReservationsto
1
Sonic theHedgehog
Paul E.Ceruzzi,A HistoryofModernComputing
I. Bernard Cohen,Howard Aiken: Portrait of a ComputerPioneer
I.BernardCohenandGregoryW.Welch,editors,Makin’Numbers:HowardAiken
and theComputer
JohnHendry,InnovatingforFailure:GovernmentPolicyandtheEarlyBritishComputer
Industry
MichaelLindgren,GloryandFailure:TheDifferenceEnginesofJohannMu¨ller,Charles
Babbage,andGeorg andEdvard Scheutz
David E. Lundstrom,A FewGood Menfrom Univac
R.Moreau, TheComputer Comes ofAge: ThePeople,the Hardware, andtheSoftware
Emerson W.Pugh, Building IBM:Shaping anIndustryandIts Technology
Emerson W.Pugh, MemoriesThat ShapedanIndustry
EmersonW.Pugh,LyleR.Johnson,andJohnH.Palmer,IBM’s360andEarly370
Systems
Kent C. Redmond andThomas M. Smith,FromWhirlwind toMITRE: TheR&D
Storyof theSAGEAir DefenseComputer
Rau´lRojasand Ulf Hashagen, editors, TheFirstComputers—Historyand
Architectures
Dorothy Stein, Ada:ALife anda Legacy
John Vardalas,TheComputer Revolution in Canada:Building National Technological
Competence,1945–1980
Maurice V.Wilkes,Memoirs ofa Computer Pioneer
A History of Modern Computing
Second edition
Paul E. Ceruzzi
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
#1998, 2003Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or
information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the
publisher.
ThisbookwassetinNewBaskervillebyTechsetCompositionLtd.,Salisbury,UK,
and wasprinted and boundin theUnitedStatesof America.
Libraryof CongressCataloging-in-Publication Data
Ceruzzi,Paul E.
Ahistoryof moderncomputing /Paul E.Ceruzzi.—2nd ed.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN0-262-53203-4 (pbk. : alk.paper)
1.Computers—History. 2.Electronic dataprocessing—History. I.Title.
QA76.17 .C472003
0040.090049—dc21 2002040799
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedication
I wrote this book in an office at the Smithsonian Institution’s National
AirandSpaceMuseum,oneofthebusiestpublicspacesintheworld.On
a typical summer day there may be upwards of 50,000 visitors to the
museum—the population of a small city. These visitors—with their
desire to know something of modern technology—were a great inspira-
tion to me. Their presence was a constant reminder that technology is
not just about machines but about people: the people who design and
build machines and, more importantly, the people whose lives are
profoundly affected by them. It is to these visitors that I respectfully
dedicate this book.
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Dedication v
Preface to the Second Edition ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Defining ‘‘Computer’’ 1
1
The Advent of Commercial Computing, 1945–1956 13
2
Computing Comes of Age, 1956–1964 47
3
The Early History of Software, 1952–1968 79
4
From Mainframe to Minicomputer, 1959–1969 109
5
The ‘‘Go-Go’’ Years and the System/360, 1961–1975 143
6
The Chip and Its Impact, 1965–1975 177
7
The Personal Computer, 1972–1977 207
viii Contents
8
Augmenting Human Intellect, 1975–1985 243
9
Workstations, UNIX, and the Net, 1981–1995 281
10
‘‘Internet Time,’’ 1995–2001 307
Conclusion: The Digitization of the World Picture 345
Notes 351
Bibliography 415
Index 431
Preface to the Second Edition
As I was completing the manuscript for the first edition of A History of
Modern Computing, I found myself anxiously looking over my shoulder,
worryingthatsomenewdevelopmentincomputingwouldrender whatI
hadjustwrittenobsolete.Myconcernwaswellgrounded:asIwaswriting
the final chapter, at least one event occurred that threatened to upset
the narrative structure I had erected. That was the fanfare that
surrounded Microsoft’s introduction, in the fall of 1997, of version 4.0
of its Internet Explorer—an introduction that led the U.S. Justice
Department to file an antitrust suit against the company. I had not
beenpayingmuchattentiontoMicrosoft’sWebstrategyatthetime,butI
was confronted with the excitement surrounding Internet Explorer
literally on the day I put my completed manuscript of A History of
Modern Computing into a FedEx package for shipment to the publisher.
The antitrust suit did in fact turn out to be one of the biggest
developments in computing since 1995, and this edition will examine
it at length. Are other developments now lurking in the background,
which, when they surface, will render any attempt to write a history of
computing impossible?
With the rise of the World Wide Web came the notion of ‘‘Internet
Time.’’ Netscape’s founder Jim Clark called it ‘‘Netscape Time’’ in his
1999 book by that title: he defined it as a telescoping of the time for a
technology to proceed from invention to prototype, production,
commercial success, maturity, and senescence.1 The historian faces a
modern version of Zeno’s paradox. In the classical story, a fast runner
never reached the finish line in a race, because he first had to traverse
one-halfthedistancetotheend,whichtookafinitetime,andthenone-
half the remaining distance, which again took a smaller but still finite
time, and so on. There is a finite time between sending a completed